As the Coalition continues to argue with itself about how to deal with One Nation, Angus Taylor and his colleagues would do well to watch an electrifying speech by Britain’s Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, at her party’s conference in Birmingham last week.
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Taylor → continue → Birmingham
With the Conservatives ever so slowly inching up in opinion polls (from a very low base), and the insurgent populist party Reform UK beginning to slide as its leader Nigel Farage is almost daily tainted by new embarrassments and scandals, Badenoch left nobody wondering about how she plans to take the fight to Britain’s equivalent of Pauline Hanson.
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she → inch → Hanson
Like Labour’s Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Badenoch has emerged as a galvanising new leader.
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Badenoch → emerge → leader
Just as Burnham has given Labour new hope, Badenoch has re-energised the Tories.
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Badenoch → give → Tories
She was born in London in 1980 to Nigerian parents.
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She → bear → parents
(“Kemi” is a diminutive: she was christened Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke.)
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she → christen → ?
An engineer by training, she became an MP in 2017 and was soon promoted to cabinet.
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she → become → cabinet
Emerging as the unexpected choice for leader after the Tory trainwreck at the 2024 election, she has already claimed the biggest political scalp any opposition leader can boast, having demolished the prime minister – Labour’s election-winning but hopeless leader Keir Starmer – in a series of nimble and ruthless question time performances.
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leader → emerge → performances
Nobody should be surprised that the Conservatives are now led by a black woman.
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Conservatives → lead → woman
Labour, by contrast, is only ever led by white men.
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Labour → lead → men
The only thing about Burnham that is “diverse” is that he is a Catholic who went to Cambridge.
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who → go → Cambridge
(British Labour leaders are usually Oxford-educated Anglicans.)
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leaders → educate → ?
The tweed-coated gentlemen, blue-haired old ladies and earnest whey-faced Young Conservatives who make up the Tory rank and file have fallen in love with Badenoch.
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who → make → Badenoch
They can tell a winner when they see one.
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they → tell → one
Like their all-time hero Margaret Thatcher, she comes from the party’s right wing.
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she → come → wing
At the Tory conference, I even heard some activists refer to her as “the black Margaret”.
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activists → hear → Margaret
She loves it.
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She → love → it
She uses her African heritage as a platform to skewer identity politics and denounce the postmodern Left’s campaign to make Britons feel ashamed of their country’s past.
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Britons → use → past
Her conference speech was steeped in old-fashioned patriotism.
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speech → steep → patriotism
“I don’t know whether you’ve noticed,” she said teasingly, “but I am black.
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I → know → ?
I’m proud of my country.
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I → ’m → country
I’m proud of our history.”
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I → ’m → history
Apart from the reference to skin colour, Nigel Farage could have delivered the same lines.
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Farage → deliver → lines
But Badenoch has made a very deliberate decision that the way for the Tories to deal with Farage’s party is to hit it hard; to expose it, relentlessly and mercilessly, for what it is.
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it → make → it
Initially, her tactics caused misgivings among some Conservatives, who felt uncomfortable attacking their rival on the right.
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who → cause → right
A friend of mine who is intimately involved with her political tactics told me last week, invoking a Thatcherite trope: “She’s adamant.
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She → involve → trope
The lady’s not for turning.
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lady → ’ → turning
She understands that nothing will impress straying Tory voters more than a strong leader.
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nothing → understand → leader
Nothing will lose them faster than a pale imitator.
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Nothing → lose → imitator
The fact that she comes from the Tory right – on a whole range of issues, she is as hard line as it gets – both inoculates her from being written off as an equivocating centrist and gives her critique of Farage greater force.
In her conference speech, she made it clear that her criticism was not of people who are tempted to vote for Reform.
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who → come → Reform
“These,” she said, “are our people …
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she → say → ?
we let them down and we want them to come back home.
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them → let → them
They deserve better than Reform politicians.”
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They → deserve → politicians
After a devastating demolition of the litany of Reform candidates who have been exposed as crooks, shonks, weirdos, perverts and, in one case, a Russian agent of influence, there came the line that brought the party faithful roaring, unitedly, to their feet:
“To those who say ‘unite the right’, we are not uniting with that!”
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we → expose → that
She went on to say: “People deserve better than that.
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People → go → that
And we are going to give them better than that.
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we → go → that
Character, conduct and standards matter.
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Character → matter → ?
“I don’t want to live in a country run by people who threaten journalists, call veterans traitors, and debate whether my mixed-race children are English.
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children → want → veterans
Reform MPs are openly questioning people’s identity.
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MPs → question → identity
I don’t want to explain to my son when we’re watching our brilliant England team play football that some people don’t think our black players are English …
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players → want → football
…and 5 more, not listed.
The Aporia
