This is a seismic moment. Kemi must reunite the Right – or we are doomed

Kemi
Kemi

Do you think Lefties ever glance at the Conservative Party and ask themselves whether positive discrimination is everything it’s cracked up to be? Kemi Badenoch is the party’s second non-white and fourth female leader. And you know what? It’s no big deal.

For Labour, which has only ever been led by white men, identity is everything. Rachel Reeves never misses an opportunity to say that she is the first woman Chancellor and that she should be a role model to little girls. David Lammy, miffed that he was not the first black Foreign Secretary, issued a statement about how proud he was to be the first working-class black foreign secretary from Tottenham (which, obviously, he is).

Most Tories are nonplussed by the suggestion that you should vote on the basis of someone’s X-chromosomes or melanin levels. I mention this only because more than one Labour-supporting friend, including some clever and well-informed people, took it for granted that Kemi would suffer from what they assumed to be a measure of racism and sexism among the party membership.

It’s a reminder that political polarisation rests largely on a lack of curiosity about what the other side believes; and perhaps a reminder, too, that, as Jonathan Haidt’s meticulous research shows, Leftists are much worse at understanding how Rightists think than the reverse.

Now that the leadership election is out of the way, the work begins. During the campaign, Kemi made a point of not issuing any policy commitments. This made sense both tactically (she was ahead, so why take risks?) and strategically (who knows what the situation will be by the next election?) But some decisions cannot be postponed.

The next election will ultimately be determined by the economy, traditionally a Tory strong suit. When we voted three months ago, the issue had lost its salience, largely because of a belief that there was little difference between the main parties. But, this week, Labour showed the country how large the gap truly is.

The hope for Kemi must be that, by the next election, there will be an urgent desire to get rid of Labour, and that voters will turn to the most plausible alternative government, denying themselves the indulgence of voting for a smaller party. But unless the Tories are seen as a credible and responsible government-in-waiting, a chunk of the electorate might feel that both main parties have had their chance, and that it is time for something different.

How, then, can Kemi position her party as the beneficiary of the anti-Labour swing which is already underway and which will surely become stronger now with each passing month?

Here we come to the central difficulty for anyone who favours limited government. Voters absolutely buy the diagnosis. They accept that they are paying higher and higher taxes without any improvement in public services. They resent the fact that nothing seems to work. But they shy away from the only possible cure, namely a radical reduction in the size of the state.

The lockdown left Britain in an authoritarian mood. It changed the relationship between state and citizen. By the time it ended, a lot of people expected regular government handouts. By 64 to 26 per cent, voters prefer the statement “The government should prioritise spending on schools and hospitals” to “The government should prioritise cutting income tax.”

The reason Labour got away with its budget is that – on economics, not on culture – Britain has drifted to the Left. Sixty-five per cent of us want to nationalise buses, 67 per cent trains, and 69 per cent water companies. Fifty-eight per cent want to nationalise Ticketmaster, for heaven’s sake.

How do the Conservatives sell their policies to people who start from such statist assumptions? How do they articulate what will, by the next election, be a fierce dislike of Labour’s economic legacy without opening themselves to the charge that they want some kind of Dickensian sweatshop economy?

The challenge is especially tough because voters anchor to the status quo. At the last election, Labour was asked what taxes it intended to raise. At the next, the Tories will be asked what spending they mean to cut. Because people are loss-averse, taking away a benefit, even a recent one, is much harder than refusing to offer it in the first place.

It can be done, though. Every one of Margaret Thatcher’s privatisations and deregulations was unpopular when it happened, but that did not stop her winning three handsome victories. Then again, Thatcher did not have to contend with the shrunken attention-spans, the desire for instant gratification, that characterise our TikTok age. Nor did she have to contend with a challenger party on the Right. On the contrary, she benefited from a split on the other side.

In the end, the issue that is likeliest to tip 2024 Reform voters into backing the Tories is the desire to get rid of a Labour government that is making them palpably poorer. But, before we get to that stage, the Tories need to remove the chief obstacle in the path of those Reform defectors, namely their own record on immigration.

They will have to set about the task almost immediately if they want to win themselves a hearing before the next election. After years of broken promises, solemn assurances no longer work.

One of the reasons that I voted for Robert Jenrick, despite knowing he was almost certain to lose, is that he had the greater credibility among Reform voters. He had resigned in protest at the last government’s immigration policies, and had obviously done a great deal of thinking, then and since, about how to control our borders. He ended up concluding that it could not be done without quitting the European Convention on Human Rights – a policy that alienated the more Establishment wing of his party.

I suspect that he is correct about the ECHR, though we should not underestimate the difficulty of implementation. A policy of withdrawal would be resisted every bit as furiously as Brexit was, and by the same groups. It would consume the government’s energies for most of its first term.

And what if, after all that, it failed? What if we left the ECHR only to find that, whether in the name of the UN Refugee Convention, or simply through domestic judicial activism, our courts still overturned as many deportation orders as possible?

Perhaps Kemi has an alternative plan. Perhaps Britain could derogate from parts of the ECHR, or get a group of countries together and threaten to leave unless fundamental changes are made. Or perhaps the answer is to reform our domestic legal system, reducing the scope for judicial review, reversing the Blair reforms that created the supreme court and replacing the Human Rights Act.

What is certain is that the issue cannot be deferred. Voters will not be satisfied, as they were when Margaret Thatcher was leader, with an unspecific promise to be firm on immigration.

Should Kemi appoint her defeated rival as Shadow Home Secretary? He would presumably still want to quit the ECHR. But he might also be very effective vis-à-vis Reform.

If Reform voters can be won back, many Lib Dem seats will automatically turn Tory again. Ed Davey’s party made no significant advance at the last election. The Lib Dem vote rose proportionately only from 11.6 per cent to 12.2 per cent and, numerically, it actually fell. But, because many Tories stayed at home or switched to Reform, the yellows went from 15 MPs to 72.

Kemi must reunite the Right while looking statesmanlike. I have always felt that the policy differences between the Tories and Reform are relatively minor. But the tonal differences are significant.

How does Kemi win over voters who are attracted by an angrier and more accusatory style while still looking like a prime minister in waiting? It’s a hell of a tightrope to walk. And if she stumbles, it won’t just be the Tories who go plummeting down; it will be the country.