{"id":80257,"date":"2025-02-18T07:16:32","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T07:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=80257"},"modified":"2025-02-18T07:16:32","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T07:16:32","slug":"badenochs-views-are-poisonous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/02\/18\/badenochs-views-are-poisonous\/","title":{"rendered":"Badenoch\u2019s views are poisonous"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2025\/feb\/17\/kemi-badenoch-western-civilisation-will-be-lost-tory-party-fails\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this Guardian<\/a> comment:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"dcr-s3ycb2\">Kemi Badenoch has said \u201cour country and all of western civilisation will be lost\u201d if efforts to renew the Conservative party and drive forward rightwing ideas globally fail.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-s3ycb2\">Likening her own leadership to Donald Trump\u2019s 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 \u201cpronouns, diversity policies and climate activism\u201d as a \u201cpoison\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This is very clearly full-on Trump and Vance nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>But let\u2019s be clear what she\u2019s saying. It is that these things don\u2019t matter:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Respecting a person\u2019s wishes, including about how they wish to be addressed.<\/li>\n<li>Inequality, whether it be caused by poverty, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality, other cause or simple prejudice.<\/li>\n<li>Caring about your children\u2019s, grandchildren\u2019s and the generations beyond them\u2019s future.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Following through on this argument, the future of western civilisation is, in that case, apparently dependent upon the promotion of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Inequality<\/li>\n<li>Prejudice<\/li>\n<li>Indifference<\/li>\n<li>Racism<\/li>\n<li>Misogyny<\/li>\n<li>Homophobia<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This, of course, is not what civilisation is about. Barbarism it might be, but civilisation it is not.<\/p>\n<p>This was, apparently,\u00a0 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:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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:<\/p>\n<p>Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.<\/p>\n<p>Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.<\/p>\n<p>Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.<\/p>\n<p>Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.<\/p>\n<p>Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.<\/p>\n<p>Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.<\/p>\n<p>Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.<\/p>\n<p>Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.<\/p>\n<p>Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.<\/p>\n<p>Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Badenoch is describing all that is good as \u201cpoison\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n<p>A quick poll:<\/p>\n<div id=\"polls-135\" class=\"wp-polls\">\n\t\t<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Has Kemi Badenoch moved to the far-right?<\/strong><\/p><div id=\"polls-135-ans\" class=\"wp-polls-ans\"><ul class=\"wp-polls-ul\">\n\t\t<li>Yes <small>(52%, 286 Votes)<\/small><div class=\"pollbar\" style=\"width: 52%;\" title=\"Yes (52% | 286 Votes)\"><\/div><\/li>\n\t\t<li>Let's just call her fascist now <small>(44%, 240 Votes)<\/small><div class=\"pollbar\" style=\"width: 44%;\" title=\"Let&#039;s just call her fascist now (44% | 240 Votes)\"><\/div><\/li>\n\t\t<li>No <small>(2%, 11 Votes)<\/small><div class=\"pollbar\" style=\"width: 2%;\" title=\"No (2% | 11 Votes)\"><\/div><\/li>\n\t\t<li>I don't know <small>(2%, 9 Votes)<\/small><div class=\"pollbar\" style=\"width: 2%;\" title=\"I don&#039;t know (2% | 9 Votes)\"><\/div><\/li>\n\t\t<\/ul><p style=\"text-align: center;\">Total Voters: <strong>546<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n\t\t<input type=\"hidden\" id=\"poll_135_nonce\" name=\"wp-polls-nonce\" value=\"85c589ba7c\" \/>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"polls-135-loading\" class=\"wp-polls-loading\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-polls\/images\/loading.gif\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Loading ...\" title=\"Loading ...\" class=\"wp-polls-image\" \/>&nbsp;Loading ...<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I tried to find a transcript of Kemi Badenoch&#8217;s keynote speech to the so-called Alliance for Responsible Citizenship yesterday but failed to do so without<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/02\/18\/badenochs-views-are-poisonous\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,96,14,35,16,203,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-age-of-aggression","category-conservatives","category-corruption","category-economics","category-ethics","category-fascism","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80257"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80272,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80257\/revisions\/80272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}