I tried to find a transcript of Kemi Badenoch's keynote speech to the so-called Alliance for Responsible Citizenship yesterday but failed to do so without paying for it, and I will not do that. So, let me take its flavour from this Guardian comment:
Kemi Badenoch has said “our country and all of western civilisation will be lost” if efforts to renew the Conservative party and drive forward rightwing ideas globally fail.
Likening her own leadership to Donald Trump's second term, she used a gathering of fellow conservatives to attack Keir Starmer for taking the knee in a nod to Black Lives Matter and described “pronouns, diversity policies and climate activism” as a “poison”.
This is very clearly full-on Trump and Vance nonsense.
But let's be clear what she's saying. It is that these things don't matter:
- Respecting a person's wishes, including about how they wish to be addressed.
- Inequality, whether it be caused by poverty, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality, other cause or simple prejudice.
- Caring about your children's, grandchildren's and the generations beyond them's future.
Following through on this argument, the future of western civilisation is, in that case, apparently dependent upon the promotion of:
- Inequality
- Prejudice
- Indifference
- Racism
- Misogyny
- Homophobia
This, of course, is not what civilisation is about. Barbarism it might be, but civilisation it is not.
This was, apparently, a profoundly Christian event. Unlike most people, I have read the New Testament, some of it quite a number of times, although I do not describe myself as Christian, maybe as a consequence. You can choose what you think best summarises the teaching of Jesus on which many of these people rely for their their authority. One such version could be The Beatitudes in Matthew Chapter 5, verses 1 to 12, which says:
Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them. He said:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Jesus and Christocentric Western society should, then, on this basis, be biased toward the poor, the vulnerable, the weak, the oppressed and those who suffer. And yet it is very clear that in Badenoch's view, Western civilisation is, in fact, built upon thinking exactly opposed to this logic. If the core message of Jesus (and many other ethical teachers) is that we should treat others as we would wish to be treated ourselves what she said to this conference today is about as far removed from the real teachings of Christianity as you could get.
I offer this thought not to promote the interests of Christianity, but to highlight the utter hypocrisy of Badenoch, including on climate where the Celtic Christian tradition is profoundly green.
Badenoch is describing all that is good as “poison”. Only a deeply deluded person, desperate for personal advancement by exploiting others could do so. That is what Badenoch is. She and this ideology are deeply dangerous to all but those who, like her, wish to exploit others in this country. I would hate to describe anyone as poisonous, but her views are.
A quick poll:
Has Kemi Badenoch moved to the far-right?
- Yes (52%, 286 Votes)
- Let's just call her fascist now (44%, 240 Votes)
- No (2%, 11 Votes)
- I don't know (2%, 9 Votes)
Total Voters: 546
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Following on from todays first post if defence is an issue we need people willing to go out onto the front line to defend the UK
How will a society which has been intentionally divided do this of a large chunk of the population say quite rightly ‘not my war mate’
If they do end up on the front line they clearly wont be well disposed to those trying to get them to fight which is why Evelyn Waugh was sent on extended leave and ended up writing Brideshead Revisited. His Commanding Officer realised that otherwise his men were likley to kill him he was such a threat to their lives.
Agreed
Being a second lieutenant in WW1 was not good news. I think they had the shortest life expectancy. Some were undoubtedly shot by their own side.
In a conversation with a retired Brigadier, he asked me the ‘trick’ question, ‘Of commissioned officers in WW1, which rank had the highest death rate, killed in action?’
Naturally, I plumped for 2nd Lieutenants.
The answer was ‘Generals’. I have to say I was more than surprised, but he was emphatic.
Elsewhere, I found that German snipers were instructed to pick off men with rank insignia on their cuffs, or who had weedy legs and were in breeches and long boots, and therefore were officers! As WW1 progressed some officers started to sling a rifle (not their usual issue) to appear not like an officer. Others determinedly refused to ‘funk’ it, and I suppose remained a more identifiable sniper target.
And on a serious note, thankfully we are almost 80 years on from the end of WW2. Earlier post-WW2 politicians who had been officers in WW2 will have had the duty of writing letters of condolence to the parents or spouses of men who had died under their command; they will have seen death close up and at scale. The likes of Edward Heath and Denis Healey, who experienced that are now long gone; they would clearly have understood the consequences of political decisions to engage in war. I cannot speak for today’s politicians … so leave without commenting.
Thanks
Jesus would welcome the migrant boats with open arms.
Badenoch’s ARC speech in full: https://conservativehome.com/2025/02/17/conservative-leader-kemi-badenochs-full-speech-to-the-alliance-for-responsible-citizenship/?utm_source=chatgpt.
Where does one even begin to unravel this level of delusion?
Take it at face value. It is deluded.
Badenoch is a woman and from ethnic minority.
I say that because what I saw the other day was one of the most offensive human beings in my life and those two factors above have nothing to do with it. She was clasping herself to that event because her career depends on it. All I saw was me, me, me!
I read those reports too. I agree with everything you’ve said, and as you know, I self-describe as “a follower of Jesus”.
Looking at evangelical Christianity from the inside, I’m increasingly alarmed to see this stuff being lapped up as “Christian”. It isn’t just cynical hypocrites like Fa***e or criminals like Ya*l*y-Le**on, but (former) MPs like Miriam Cates who pop up at these right-wing events and are then profiled favourably in the Christian media (Premier), despite having shared platforms with some very nasty fascists. The playbook for all this has been used in America for decades, and it IS happening here now, although from a weaker numerical church base.
There is another side though, the Jesus followers who DO subscribe to those Beatitudes, who DO care, and live out, and proclaim and practice social justice, and who along with other 3rd sector organisations from all faiths and none, have been trying to fill the yawning gaps in state provision.
Unlike the first group, they are not flush with foreign cash, or motivated by Tufton Street ideology, and as demand grows while funds fall, they are beginning to FAIL to plug the gaping holes in state provision, indeed the holes CAUSED by the state’s dereliction of duty and its sellout to neoliberal greed and incompetence.
The shrinking state has relied on us to cover up its failures. But they won’t of course finance us. Foodbanks can’t keep up, breakfast clubs (60p per pupil?), youth clubs, homelessness projects, etc (insert very long list of other projects here) rely on donations and volunteers – and both are drying up. Of course they are, the people who give most generously are the poor (see story of widows mite Luke 21.1-4), but the state is cynically relying on them, as always, to put sticking plasters on the gaping wounds of austerity and injustice. The plasters are peeling off, the wounds have gone septic underneath.
The bad news is, we can’t keep up. Not because we don’t care, but because the state has withdrawn too far, because those who have more than they need insist on sucking more and more of the wealth into their own overfull wallets, to such an extent that everything is beginning to fall apart.
There is another side to the Jesus story that Badenoch forgets. It’s called judgement. Not the distorted Trumpian version of Armageddon, beloved of the Maga crowd but the thread that runs through the Hebrew prophets and the teaching of Jesus himself, the judgement that topples rulers from their thrones, that sees the mighty “cast down from their thrones”, that saw Jerusalem and 2nd Temple Judaism itself destroyed within 40 years of Jesus death.
Jesus told the Pharisees they were blind. But he didn’t condemn them for BEING blind, but for insisting that they could SEE, that THEY should be the leaders. (John 9.40, but the whole chapter 9 is a brilliant satirical political religious piece of comedy, where the star of the show is the blind beggar, not Jesus).
Badenoch wants to hitch her wagon to “Christianity” for political gain – she may get more than she bargained for. She will be judged by the judgement she uses on others. It will not be pretty.
Thanks
So much of what the right preach, in US and increasingly here in the UK, does not seem to me to be Christian at all.
It seems to be all Old Testament. Pre-Christian.
That’s not really fair on the Hebrew prophets. Take social justice out of the Old Testament and it falls apart. Take some of those prophets to Israel and they would get v angry. They were especially tough on kings and priests.
The best quotes on justice come from the Hebrew scriptures, including Torah, Prophets and Widom sections. It’s where Jesus got his best stuff from, after all, he was Jewish!
“our country and all of western civilisation will be lost”
“Our country” – well certainly mine but not yours because, Mrs Bad-Enoch, you are Nigerian, specifically, upper-middle class Nigerian, with a very priviledged background even by UK standards and thus you have little to say that it of interest or relevance about the UK or the people that live in it.
Bad-Enoch has contributed zero to the UK, apart from further poisoning its politics. That said, on a plus point, she is destroying what is left of the Tory party.
In fairness, she is British too. But she deserves come from a very privileged background. That extraordinary, and deeply misplaced, self confidence had to come from somewhere.
I’ve had the privilege of knowing and working with quite a lot of black people in my life – most of afro-carribbean decent. In my early 20s, living in Burton on Trent and heavily into Northern Soul, all-nighters, etc half the lads me and my white mates hung out with were black. From those years I can vouch for the racism they experienced, as other white people (mainly older white men) used racist expressions to our friends in front of us white lads, presumably on the assumption that we agreed, of if we didn’t too bad (and I shan’t even bother to mention the behaviour of police if we ever got stopped) .
Last year, a good friend from those days, who I paddle board with on occasion, told about being in a sports shop when a black lad came in, obviously looking for something, but was completely ignored by the white staff. A minute or two later a white couple came in and a sales assistant went straight over to them. My friend said that the memories of what we’d witnessed back in the 1970s came flooding back, but that he was shocked that this was happening in 2024 (I wasn’t).
Anyway, that’s by way of saying that I’m absolutely amazed that Badenoch thinks that any white person who associates with the extreme right has any time for black people. They don’t. They are, by definition, racist. They simply tolerate black people as useful fools – symbols of how ‘inclusive’ their ‘movement’ has become, and how ‘tolerant’ they are. So when Badenoch talks about some cultures being more superior than others, she’s clearly being utterly stupid, or utterly naive, or totally disingenuous for the sake of getting on in the political circles she inhabits, if she thinks that ‘superiority’ applies to her – because white people on the extreme right are certainly not including any kind of non-white culture in their thinking.
And as for worshiping Trump. She should recall his out and out support for white supremacists – a faction in his movement that has only become stronger and more emboldened since his reelection. I’d recommend she watch a classic Alan Parker film from 1988, which she’s too young to have watched: Mississippi Burning, a film loosely based on the gruesome murder of three black men in 1964. Or, more recently, ‘The Order’, which charts an investigation into the ‘Aryan Nation’ – an antisemitic, white supremacist group much admired by many current day Trump supporters.
Interestingly, the murders of the black men in Mississippi and the action of the Aryan Nation were investigated and curtailed (to an extent) by the FBI, given local law enforcement was no able or willing to do much about them, which is probably a good deal of the reason why the FBI is so hated by Trump and his supporters.
In short, Badenoch, get real!
A great deal to agree with. And I am not shocked by racism in 2024. Some now think they have permission to do it openly.
Cynicism and doubt can creep into our lives so easily. As poet W. H. Auden wrote, the decision before me every day is to “love my crooked neighbour, with all my crooked heart.”
🙂
“The Subversion of Christianity” by Jacques Elul is relevant and well worth reading. The English version is easily available and not expensive.
Thank you, Richard.
Bad or Mad Enoch is the child of immigrants, like Braverman, Patel and me. I continue to be stunned by such outbursts. There’s a desperation to fit in, hence the kicking down and espousing of certain causes and extremities.
It’s not new, though. Back in the 1990s and noughties, there was cross between Mussolini and Bertie Wooster by the name of Derek Laud. The Surrey fox hunter supports repatriation.
Badenoch is an anchor baby and from money. Patel and Braverman* are from empire’s dirt workers. Sara Lanier and I have exchanged comments about them. *Braverman’s maternal uncle was the Mauritian High Commissioner to the UK in the 1970s and hailed from a party that still plays the Hindutva card. It’s not just Tories. Centrists like Trevor Philips are little better.
Further to Peter’s comments, dad joined the RAF on December 1964, a month after his twentieth birthday, and served until March 1991. Some of the officers and NCOs he came across until the mid-1980s had served in WW2. He reckons that the officers were not particularly right wing and often paternalist, taking their welfare role seriously and, having been at war, not hawkish. The ranks and aspiring officers, younger and unlikely to have been at war, were often the right wing ones, especially as Thatcher grew in prominence.
Further to Ivan’s comments, I have witnessed, too, here and overseas. I have also been thought to be a shop assistant, mid-1990s, and waiter, last December and, a decade ago when running late, turned down for hotel accommodation in rural France, but the white couple after me were offered.
I am sorry to hear the last
Thank you
Richard – what were you saying about ‘not afraid to voice it’ (their racism). And what does the Colonel say about his experience. This, comment – and from someone who considers themselves a Niki Haley supporter rather than a Trumpist.
‘Bring back slavery! They need to be taught a lesson in respect’
https://x.com/osint_69/status/1891901474466050127
These people are evil.
I was brought up as a Christian although I don’t identify as one now.
The far right seem to rely a lot on the Old Testament of the Bible, which, in my view, has nothing to do with Christianity, as it was written before Christ!