Kemi Badenoch has made clear that she thinks that university-educated people who might challenge what she wants to do to this country are high on her list of the enemies of society. I, on the other hand, work at a university, seeking to produce the people who might hold her to account. Does that make me Kemi Badenoch's problem?
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
Am I your problem, Kemi Badenoch? I asked the question for a very good reason, because Kemi Badenoch published a pamphlet during the course of her Conservative Party leadership campaign. It was entitled, ‘Conservatism in Crisis, The Rise of the Bureaucratic Class', and in it she attacked UK society.
Some are those who have mental health issues. They, apparently, are a massive burden to society, and I'm going to discuss that in another video soon.
But another group that she took great issue with are those who work in universities, and I do. And those who've got degrees. And I have. In fact, almost half the young people in the UK now have degrees, and Kemi Badenoch really does not like that fact.
Her diatribe, because I can't really describe this document in any other way, is based upon prejudice. There is no doubt about that; it's very clear from everything that drips from it. But why does she hate those who are educated so much? Well, it's clear that the answer comes from her analysis of electoral results in the USA.
Her claim is that those who had degrees voted for Biden in 2020 and those who hadn't voted for Trump and, therefore, having a degree is very obviously a bad thing to possess.
It makes you left-wing, she claims, and that is disastrous because the left wing is the enemy in her very weird worldview.
And it makes you a proponent of bureaucracy, that system of government that she wishes to control by becoming leader of the opposition and so prospective prime minister, but which she apparently hates.
I deliberately used the tone that I did because there is an obvious paradox in everything that she's saying. How can she want to control government and yet hate it so much?
How can she hate bureaucracy and yet want to control the biggest bureaucracy that we have? Because government is inevitably, and there is no way around this, bureaucratic.
I don't know. Unless we presume that what she wants to do is create new elites and new power structures, a new system of control, which are fundamentally different to those which have gone before.
Now maybe that is exactly what she is saying. And I am reading between the lines of this document and between the lines of what she said when she was elected very recently to be leader.
She said the Conservatives have to go back to their roots and reimagine what it means to form a government in the future. Is she saying, and it seemed to be the case that she is, that everything that the Conservatives have been doing when in office is wrong? Is she saying, like Liz Truss, that, frankly, the Conservatives have moved so far to the left, in her view, as was the view of Liz Truss, that she has to drag them into a totally different space?
Is she saying that education for most people is wrong because they then might question the system, which she believes she must have control of? Is she challenging the right to literally challenge, which is what a good education encourages the person to do?
I believe she is doing all those things. I believe her paranoia about education is quite simply that it means that people, when they are informed, understand that there need to be balances in society to ensure that everyone has a chance to prosper. Whereas she takes the view, and I think it's a eugenic view, that there are some who are naturally entitled to prosper. And the rest are destined to serve.
That is what I think she's arguing. And my belief as an educator is that we have done our duty if we create people who challenge the worldview that Kemi Badenoch represents.
I am, therefore, delighted to be Kemi Badenoch's problem. It's my aim to be her problem. It's the aim of most of my university colleagues throughout the UK to be Kemi Badenoch's problem. Because our goal in life is to create people who question, challenge and change systems for the better.
But she wants none of that. She wants to go back to a past, as she sees it, where power was ensconced in the hands of a few who ruled imperially without challenge from the masses. And that is the last thing that I think this country wants.
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A large part of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is to reduce the levels of education, and its publicy funded availability as a right, in the USA.
Badenoch wants to mirror the far right conservative agenda of Project 2025, then she needs to admit whose manifesto she is advocating.
Trump proposes eliminating the Dept of Education.It has fewer functions than our DfE because of the Federal structure but it’s a sop to the local extremists.
In a Yougov poll people were asked which UK party they voted for and if they supported Trump or Harris. The only party which showed majority support for Trump was Reform. I think Badenoch is trying to appeal to Reform voters.
“Kemi Badenoch has made clear that she thinks that university-educated people who might challenge what she wants to do to this country are high on her list of the enemies of society.”
She is taking a whole chapter out of the ‘Elon Musk Playbook”!
Correct
In ain increasingly complicated technical society we need educated people for it to work.
If she wants to move back to a pre industrial society then she should be clear about it.
I have of course come across a lot of people who did very well despite not having been to University, as has been pointed out to me its often the fact that you were potentially able to go, not that you did that makes the difference so she will still have to deal with the problem of an aware, questioning populace.
Having said that however I have come across plenty of people who went to University not that it seemed to have made much difference, no names no pack drill!
Obviously the university establishment is part of the radical left wing not to say Marxist state administrative bureaucracy that is Badenoch’s enemy. At least in her fevered imagination, if not in reality.
But the research suggests that any influence of attending university (versus not attending) on social and political attitudes is small, and sometimes in the opposite direction to the assumption that university education makes people liberal and progressive. Sibling studies show graduates may actually be more conservative in some areas than non graduates. People are people.
Rather, it seems that people with more liberal attitudes are more likely to attend university. Or more likely to live and work in a social milieu that encourages liberal attitudes. So there may be (self-)selection or sorting effects.
For example, see: https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/blog/2022/10/24/does-university-make-you-liberal/
I that likely
Economists famously come out of universities unenlightened
Could they be an outlier, given that the field is classed as a social science?
I apologise but when I am moderating comments I do not see what you are answering – and so cannot comment
Hi there, can anyone explain to me what Marxism is (or at least what Trump considers to be Marxism), why so many of the left are apparently Marxists and why it’s so dangerous to society? I refuse to believe that I’m the only person ignorant about this (and that it may not be relevant on your website, sorry)
I think this is a question best addressed to Google.
I would look at the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy.
Politicians label people Marxist, Socialist or Communist, when there views differ from them.
Most of the time, the labels are wrong, by which time the damage has been done.
Bizarely, Keir Starmer described himself as a Socialist despite him being more right-wing than Margaret Thatcher, and having kicked-out most socialists from the Labour Party.
Politics is more nuanced than labels.
Right wing politicians and pundits smear opponents as “socialists, communists and Marxists” because these beliefs have already been thoroughly smeared and denounced by them for generations. No more detailed analysis of these belief systems is required.
In a way,of course, it’s reasonable to lump these ideas all together because,despite precise differences between them, they all involve the idea of equal treatment and respect for all human beings. Of regarding all people as being of equal value,regardless of human variation.
But conservatives believe the complete opposite, emphasising differences and creating hierarchies of value. Some humans deserving the good things in life whereas others only deserve to struggle.
To the right- wing mind, ” socialists communists and Marxists” ARE all the same. A threat to the conservatives own sense of superiority, whether they feel superior because of their wealth and class or their male gender or pale skin.
As I write this, I can’t help wonder where the current Labour leadership stands, and whether they can actually be seen in the same camp as the socialists etc. at all.
Yes well I also fall into the people with degrees element of the population. My worry is that not that people have degrees but some with degrees do not put the training into practice – certain politicians fall into that category.
We need to have people who can look at evidence, evaluate it and support policies based on evidence rather than some gut feeling which is was Badenoch seems to think.
Yesterday someone implied on FB that I was a member of Common Purpose – a view held by some conspiracy theorists I gather. I did not know I was part of some powerful group – obviously missed that!!!
It seems that conspiracy theories are a feature of some Trump supporters and it seems by people like Badenoch. Very dangerous.
“It seems that conspiracy theories are a feature of some Trump supporters ”
If one cannot find a valid reason for the predicament they are in (child has autism, they cannot afford to buy a house, they cannot afford to retire, they are in ill health, they have a non-status quo child) then buying into conspiracy theories provides the comfort that they are powerless over their situation.
Isn’t it interesting how, back in the 1980s and 1990s, the Tories sought to massively expand the higher education sector, if only perhaps with the cynical short-term aim, at the time, of getting those pesky unemployment figures down a bit. And now the educated population they helped to create may be coming for them…
There is no little irony in someone with Badenoch’s level of education railing against education.
And who had a mother who taught in a university!
‘Very important post this………….
Trump has got in in the U.S. on a wave of ignorance in my view. Sure, these voters are hurting about what has been affecting their lives and the problems that a very ethically and intellectually weak Democrat party did not address (and did not address, because they rely on the same sources of funding as their opponents in my view – funding is everything in the U.S I’m afraid).
Compare the people here on this blog to many of the people we come across. This BTW is not an exercise in superiority or anything like that, but when you think about trying to have conversations about the reality of money, or what stands as orthodox thinking (tax & spend for example, ‘tax payer’s money’) and is actually a load of bollocks – it is an uphill struggle. Well, imagine that problem in a country the size of the U.S.?
You’re right Richard – Bad Enoch wants people who do not think. Want she and her ilk want is compliant consumers whose consumption feeds the rich and GDP.
What modern power structures want is simply called a ‘naive consciousness’ – an accepting rather unquestioning sort of involvement in politics and I think conceived by Pablo Friere in ‘The Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ (1970). What Friere advocated – himself a victim of state indifference – was a ‘critical consciousness’ and the means to challenge and change the administration of people’s lives that went beyond merely individual concerns (say as consumers) but also would help to group people together with more common interests that would act as a balance to top down power.
Later, in the burgeoning political economy of user involvement in the so-called improvement of public services in the UK, community development practitioners like Margaret Ledwith tried to invoke the Frierean principles in that process but with little success from what I can see. In my area of social housing I have seen the consequences of naive consciousness in tenant involvement, with tenant representative organisations and board members being used to justify anything from excessive leader pay rises to the retrenchment of the very services to tenants (despite representation, they have still got a worse service than before – seemingly endorsed by other tenants!).
In the cold light of day, what we actually have in the U.S. then is a reaction that has voted for Trump in a way that prima facie looks like an exercise in mass critical consciousness but in fact really is just a grouping of dis aggregated consumers all thinking about themselves at the same time! This ain’t no revolution brother!
Because, arguably if they had a more critical consciousness, they would have not voted for a convicted felon, nor the rather fascistic stuff Trump has been advocating and everything else as they would have been concerned about its wider effects, which of course will effect them more than the rich.
You could say the Bad Enoch’s worry is about this thing called ‘cultural Marxism’ – advocated by Jordan Peterson (ugh!) so there is an ideological element there that maybe the Tory leader is offended. Friere’s ideas can be seen as a enlightenment pre-requisite of some form of revolution or questioning of the status quo – some say that this was deliberate, others that this was just a convergence with Marxism.
But whilst not really convinced about the Marxist means of power change, I will always defend its analysis of power (wealth, money) and I cannot see much changing until ordinary citizens are educated or more likely (like myself) educate themselves to become more critical and analytical about their lives and the others they share them with.
In the meantime, what the Bad Enoch wants is what the Republicans in the U.S. wants: ignorance. Because if you cannot fill a persons brain with questions, you can exploit it and fill it with hate. See this quote from the film Mississippi Burning which I think says it all really:
‘Ward: Where does it come from, all this hatred?
Anderson: You know, when I was a little boy, there was an old Negro farmer lived down the road from us, name of Monroe. And he was, uh, – well, I guess he was just a little luckier than my Daddy was. He bought himself a mule. That was a big deal around that town. Now, my Daddy hated that mule, ’cause his friends were always kiddin’ him about oh, they saw Monroe out plowin’ with his new mule, and Monroe was gonna rent another field now they had a mule. And one morning that mule just showed up dead. They poisoned the water. And after that there was never any mention about that mule around my Daddy. It just never came up. So one time, we were drivin’ down the road and we passed Monroe’s place and we saw it was empty. He’d just packed up and left, I guess. Gone up North, or somethin’. I looked over at my Daddy’s face – and I knew he’d done it. And he saw that I knew. He was ashamed. I guess he was ashamed. He looked at me and he said: ‘If you ain’t better than a nigger, son, who are you better than?’…He was an old man just so full of hate that he didn’t know that bein’ poor was what was killin’ him.”
Thanks
It puzzled some Marxists that southern racism was often stronger among the poor than many of the the Bourgeoisie.
It was simple. If they had someone to look down on it helped them to cope with their poverty and low position.
Bullies have the same motivation -they can put themselves one up by making others one down. But the feeling soon fades so it has to be repeated.
I don’t know the answer but depriving them of an audience which tolerates the behaviour is often part of it. Or the bullied smacks him hard. In my last few years in teaching I saw a few bullied kids do this and get suspended. I suppose i grew up in a different era but my views were not welcome.
Marxists only seemed to see division in terms of class which makes them a bit colour blind initially in their development.
But more generally the Left seem to have failed too because the answer to the question is surely that no people of any colour should be as poor as they are in parts of the U.S. – look at Robert Kennedy’s investigations and visits in the America of the 1960’s and what that revealed in the deep South and even the poorer areas of cities like New York. It was shocking.
Then think of Cathy Come Home in the UK in 1966.
The question has to be – what is the alternative? Where is the Left – if that is all we can rely on?
All I see is an accommodation of mass cruelty – from our housing estates to Gaza in the middle east. Simply because apparently there are no ideas and very little hope. So, the human death wish comes into play.
Agreed
With respect, Kemi doesn’t give a fukc about what you do, say or think..
If you really thought that you would not spend your time reading this blog or commenting here
We know that the Bad Enoch could not give a damn because she is an opportunist, she is in this for herself which makes it even more important that there is some form of opposition to her aims and objectives.
All this current right-wing anti-intellectualism goes right back to Nazi book-burning and the Spanish fascist chanting ‘¡Mueran los intelectuales! ¡Abajo la inteligencia! ¡Viva la Muerte!’ – ‘Death to intellectuals! Down with intelligence! Long live death!’
(If you’re wondering how anti-intellectualism-death-wish-fascism are linked, Sartre elucidates (in his writing on anti-semitism, etc): the fascist ‘longs to become like stone’ – to stop thinking, stop living – a theme also explored brilliantly in Saramago’s classic ‘The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis’ – in which the central character is already dead!)
Thanks
Leader of the Conservatives, Kimi Badenoch (MEng University Sussex, College Fellow, Birkbeck University of London) may meet her nemesis in Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner (became pregnant, and left school without obtaining any qualifications. Later studied part-time at Stockport College, learning British Sign Language, and gaining a National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) Level 2 in social care)..