The disconnect between the UK's politicians and ethics is becoming ever clearer.
As John Crace notes in The Guardian today, Kemi Badenoch was in action on the Today programme yesterday and said:
I don't agree with a foreign policy of meetings and saying nice things to one another.
As he noted:
It seems that Badenoch's approach in international diplomacy is to go to war first and to ask questions afterwards.
Much like Trump, then, she is uncaring to her core.
Meanwhile, the same paper noted:
The government must find ways to reconnect emotionally with voters, Keir Starmer's chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, is said to have warned cabinet ministers, in a meeting where the prime minister said they were in “the fight of our lives”
So, having crushed the spirits of Labour members whilst expelling or repelling many of them, before gloating over having done so, whilst simultaneously destroying hope in the country through its actions, Labour now wants to "reconnect emotionally". I am left wondering what part of the word "trust", which is the foundation of all emotional connection, they might need to have explained to them before there is the slightest chance that this might happen.
One day's observation makes clear just how far from the politics of care those currently, supposedly, running this country are. What neither the Tories nor Labour realise is that if you want to be trusted, care is not an add-on, or simply a desirable extra that the voters might like when it is affordable. What people want are politicians who can show that respect for other people is at the epicentre of their thinking, driving all their actions, informing their choices and underpinning their planning.
Badenoch and Starmer have this in common: neither has the slightest appreciation that care matters. That is why they need to go.
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Of all the places i go to, the place that mentions Kemi Badenoch the most is right here. I never hear anyone talking about her in the Telegraph comment section. Ian Hislop has it right, the only mention of her is in the context that no one considers her serious political contender. What is the point of Kemi when there is Farage?
Kemi Badenoch is so irrelevant that whenever her name is mentioned or she is introduced, the response is….
‘Who!! Who!! Who are you?!!!’
I’ll get me coat 🙂
Craig
We’ve already seen Starmer’s (MacSweeney’s) attempt to connect emotionally with voters.
It was his “island of strangers” speech.
The emotions he chose to try and connect with were hate and selfishness.
No thanks Morgan. Please leave, and take your divisive hate with you.
It’s not just Starmer and Badenoch. For entirely too many politicians in the Westminster bubble, ethics is south of Suffolk and north of Kent.
That was an old City joke,
Many a true word said in jest
Shouldn’t all politicians be made to binge-watch the BBC television programme “The Traitors” where deliberately induced lack of trust causes widespread paranoia amongst the contestants?
Interestingly, when you then start to look at trust in nature there appears to have evolved mechanisms to develop trust especially amongst the human species where mood enhancing hormones are now very much part of our make-up. We pair-bond and use a variety of ways to keep and strengthen these bonds including sexual activity. We then extend this trust building to our off-spring and wider family culminating in a trust in democracy to widen trust. We need this last wider trust to balance the trusting communitarian and non-trusting libertarian aspects of our natures, both necessary for our survival.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247759661_Evolution_of_Parental_Caregiving
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3471369/pdf/nihms401950.pdf
Please don’t tell me I have to watch Traitors.
No I’m not. I was using the TV programme to point out that politicians are seriously deficient in understanding the importance of trust. That ought to be obvious by the way they’ve allowed adversarial politics to develop in the UK weakening democracy. Very rich people are allowed to own our mainstream media and promote distrust in the interest of promoting division, for example:-
https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2025/12/29/daily-mail-jewish-caricature-zack-polanski/
Phew…
Tough talk but I bet you Kemi and Stymied’s children will not be going anywhere near the Ukraine. Our kids might end up there though in our second period of Edwardian Britain.
Kemi is just keeping the Tory leadership seat warm for the ‘serpent in chief’ Robert ‘Damian’ Jenrick – so with Kemi your concern with her should be ‘who comes next?’. Now Jenrick is a totally reprehensible personality waiting his turn. Maybe wise if we hope that Kemi can hang around long enough to become a total loss?
Too right Prof
Trust is earned and learned by experiencing 1,000s of trustworthy actions.
Bowlby was a British pioneer in attachment theory but UK especially politics doest’t celebrate this at all, in fact neoliberalism is a dehumanising, attachment denying ideology that runs contrary to the facts of our human biology.
It makes me laugh when politicians talk and lament how we don’t trust them – as if it’s our fault, our deficit.
They act as if they can demand trust as a right, it’s actually a narcissistic position.
What they could do is show they care by creating a National Housing Service, enabling a universal housing outcome for UK citizens.
The human attachment system takes over 12 months of 24/7 good enough, reliable, sensitive, warm consistent care to form an internal working model of trust. Human development is primed for these neural connections.
Care creates trust.
Seems to me your politics of care is underpinned and supported by decades of attachment research – our shared human biology, we are hardwired to connect. We need each other- humans are weak defenceless creatures with an extraordinarily long infant maturation – all necessitate connection and care, collaboration of intelligence. Denying this is destructive.
Does “hackles rising” count as an emotional connection?
One the things I learned during Mediation training was what a powerful and restorative healing process “being really listened to” is.
Strongly felt grievances and apparently non-negotiable demands (on both sides) sometimes just evaporate when genuine listening is experienced and powerful emotional connections are made. “Issues” take second place to “people”.
But it takes skill, patience and courage, so not something our current crop of politicians could contemplate – certainly not Ms Badenoch who prefers a bit of robust bullying by all accounts, and doesn’t do listening.
Far quicker to send in the Royal Navy and Air Force, to aid and abet some piracy on the high seas as Starmer did today. Reminds me of three sets of Cod wars (all of which we lost).
Maybe this is what Starmer meant by making an emotional connection with voters – the sort of emotional connection Bluebeard made with his captives?
A question for the PM… on what basis does he expect ME to respect the rule of law, if his government won’t?
Thanks
RobertJ-
Thank you. It’s one thing for Starmer to shilly-shally, and try to ignore, the bonfire of international law in Caracas. Quite another to involve UK bases, air force and navy in piracy to support Trump’s arbitrary sanctions on Venezuelan oil. Where are the howls of outrage from respected UK public figures? I’ve seen an X/tweet from Zarah Sultana….but so far, nothing else.
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, after Starmer has supported and aided the genocide in Gaza, that a UK government has chosen to help destroy international law. But it stinks.
What strikes me in all this is the way political positioning works almost like a dance. When one side defines the emotional register, the tempo, and the framing of what counts as “strength”, the other side can end up following that lead without ever consciously choosing to. In that sense, the real issue isn’t personalities but the gravitational pull of a political culture that rewards confrontation over care.
If the loudest voices set the tone around toughness, aggression, or performative resolve, then even those who might prefer a different approach can find themselves drifting toward that centre of gravity. It’s a dynamic that pulls the whole system to the right, not because the public demands it, but because the political incentives reward mirroring rather than resisting. The result is that the space for care, trust, and genuine listening shrinks, even though those are the qualities people consistently say they want.
This is why your emphasis on care matters so much. Without a conscious commitment to it, politics defaults to the loudest and most combative framing available. And once that happens, the entire debate shifts, not because voters asked for it, but because the political class allowed itself to be led there.