I know, I know. That’s three things. But there are two more items listed later in Peter Walker’s article for the Guardian, which he probably thought of as a list of things not to like about the newly elected Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.
Although I have never called myself a Conservative, and have never joined a political party, I do like her. She is my local MP. I have written to her and got a reply that was clearly written with some thought. That is rare. Someone in my family used to be a member of the local Conservative party and I have met her several times at party events, at which she always came across as friendly and convivial. That said, I also like the fact that her smile is not jammed in the “on” position. In their current state the Tories need a leader who will fight – who “would cross the road to bite your ankles” as one of her admirers put it. Sir Keir Starmer had better put on thick socks.
Obviously, the incident in 2008 when Badenoch guessed the password of Harriet Harman’s website, hacked into it, and changed it to say that Harman had defected to the Tories and that everyone should vote for Boris Johnson as Mayor of London was an unspeakably wicked assault on Our Democracy and not funny at all.
I thought three was the number, and five is right out.
… OK, OK, I’ll go to Hell…
Of course you won’t go to Hell, Cayley. Thou hast rightly spake that “Five is right out”, and justly hast thou said that “three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shalt be three”.
The number three, being the third number, having been reached, we all know what to do.
Looks like both the US and the UK are going to have leaders who worked at McDonald’s.
I wonder how many former conservative MP’s are today thinking how differently things might have turned out had they not voted for Sunak or Mordaunt just two years ago.
They chose poorly.
My view is that Kemi would not have fared much better than Liz Truss, 2 years ago.
Better, but not much better.
The Conservatives needed a good thrashing, followed by a reasonable amount of kindness afterwards.
… And another thing: it will be much harder, i expect, to kick out Kemi as leader of the opposition, than to kick out Liz as PM.
Here are my three things about Ms. Badenoch:
1. The Guardian says “She’s an engineer – but not the kind that builds bridges” implying she is not a REAL engineer. Presumably saying so because he doesn’t understand that bridges are designed, built and controlled by software as is just about everything else in the world. Presumably because he doesn’t understand that bridge building is a fairly standardized pattern whereas software is not, and so it DOES indicate she is a logical problem solver, perhaps even more so than a bridge builder (with all due respect to people who build bridges. We all appreciate your amazing work.)
2. She hacked into Harmon’s web site. Which is something I think one might categorize as “naughty”. Which rather endears her to me. But another point — she is smart enough to know how to do that, while I suspect most of the current cabinet and shadow cabinet need their secretaries to tell them how to change the font to bold on their word document. Harriet Harmon password was so bad that someone could guess it? Isn’t that the story here? We are putting someone so incompetent in charge of important things?
3. She is a black woman which is a bit awkward for the wokesters. It makes no difference to me at all, but it does to those other guys. I’m just a bit sad she isn’t left handed, welsh and a lesbian, just so that she can check more of her minority score card bonus points, but I’ll take the two biggies. Does anyone know if she is left handed? We lefties have to stick together.
Given that she is the fourth female leader and first black person to lead the tories, and the labour have nada; kind of embarrassing for the party of woke, no? Not that being a woman provides any guarantees, Nicola Sturgeon comes to mind. Which is to say women can be just as crap at the job as men. Who knew?
Congrats to the Tory party. I think this is the first good thing they have done in the 21st century.
Whether she’ll be any good at rebuilding the party remains to be seen. However she’s going to skin Starmer alive at the despatch box. None of his normal attack lines will work.
Hacking into Harman’s website was probably as easy as PIE.
@John
Hacking into Harman’s website was probably as easy as PIE.
Maybe, but either way you cut it, either it was hard and therefore Kemi is smart, or it was easy and Harmon is incompetent.
It isn’t really a good look for Harmon.
Oh, BTW I forgot one other intersectional bingo point Kemi has is that, although she was born in London, she grew up in Nigeria. Which kind of kills the whole xenophobia accusation against people who want a sane immigration policy.
I was somewhat disturbed that Kemi Badenoch would not commit to pulling out of the ECHR – or commit to other specific policies that I, and others, support. So I voted for Robert Jenrick – who did commit to the specific policies. Just as Suella Braverman and Jacob Rees-Mogg voted for Mr Jenrick – on the basis of policy.
However, I am told that Kemi supports these policies privately – and I hope that is true.
We shall just have to wait and see.
As I was reminded a few hours ago – I am a bit of a “policy wonk”, most people are not as obsessed with policy as I am.
Kemi is certainly a good person and a good Conservative – and I hope very much that the lady becomes Prime Minister.
There have been several Tory leaders and wanna-be leaders, who have presented themselves as being on the right. Almost invariably after their career has peaked, they are revealed as being little better than Lib Dems. William Hague, Michael Howard and Michael Portillo are all examples of this. I have no more faith in Kemi Badenoch then in any of the others.
She has in the past spoken in favour of increasing legal immigration. She was close to Michael Gove. She has not committed to leaving the ECHR, so she isn’t serious about controlling immigration or about law and order. She has at no point come out against Net Zero.
Kemi is just another fake Tory grifter. She will not be able to overcome the party’s trust deficit, because all the things she wants us to believe they will do next time are all the things they failed to do during fourteen years in power.
I agree with everything Aetius says here, and recommend this article from the European Conservative by Harrison Pitt: Kemi Badenoch: The Real Woke ‘Rightist’
While I think that any prudent commentator’s judgement on Badenoch must be the jury is still out, criticism that she does not measure up to the Baroness Thatcher image is vulnerable to the reposte of asking whether Thatcher really measured up to that image when assessed as a candidate for the party leadership (and as a veteran of Ted Heath’s cabinet) in 1975.
She seems to me to be exceptionally bright, bold, and free-thinking for our Parliament. I hope she has not jumped too high at this stage of her career, and I also hope she will weather whatever storms come her way. If she does, we shall have a great PM to look forward to.
Yes, Harman is all about the children.
So the Tories have gone from an indian banker to a Nigerian anchor baby raised in Nigeria who supports mass immigration. Now Cleverly is criticising Labour for being pale and male. On the existential national question the Tories are more leftist than almost every left wing party on the continent (not counting Germany).
Despite a lot of ‘anti-woke’ posturing from them, the Tories are utterly obsessed with identity politics.
Not just rare, almost unheard of. My problem with Badenoch (apart from the links to Gove) is the same as my problem with the Tories overall. If she produced a manifesto which pledged to deport illegals, lower legal immigration, reduce the size of government, fight the intersectional madness etc etc, which should I believe her and her party? They have form of lying over and over again about these matters.
“However, I am told that Kemi supports these policies privately – and I hope that is true.”
Me too. My ground for optimism is that nobody gets to the top of the Conservative Party by rocking the boat. Or being too open about what they really think (T May springs to mind).
It doesn’t really matter – Tory wets will never let her do what needs to be done, they will wear her down like wolves chasing a bison. The Tory Party as we know it has gone the way of the dodo.
I can’t help thinking the ECHR is misdirection. The government is using it as an excuse for not doing what it clearly doesn’t want to do. The government could cite national security as the reason dangerous individuals have to be removed and that is an end to the matter. How many battalions does the ECHR have?
She has in the past spoken in favour of increasing legal immigration.
We already have *TWO* *MILLION* legal immigramts per year.
JuliaM,
Agreed. Even if she genuinely wanted to do conservative things, which is in itself debatable, she would still have the entire bureaucracy and most of her own party against her. That being said, after Tice’s “Ratner moment” when he disowned Tommy Robinson and his supporters, most of whom are probably Reform voters, the Tories may still win the next election. Sigh.
“Maybe, but either way you cut it, either it was hard and therefore Kemi is smart, or it was easy and Harmon is incompetent”
Or somebody else did it for her.
Even if they ever went through with leaving ECHR, they’d likely then just find some way of interpreting leaving it as giving themselves permission to further increase immigration. That’s what they did with Brexit.
Given the previous leaders of the Tory party over the last several decades, I’m unsure how this is grounds for optimism. Seems more like grounds to expect betrayal.
@Mark
Or somebody else did it for her.
Smart people delegate. Elon Musk didn’t weld all those rockets together.
@Paul Marks
I was disappointed too… but if you were seriously intending to herd your fellow Conservatives into a Conservative Government in due course you might well choose not to give too many public commitments that might narrow your way forward. So you could be ambivalent about pulling out of the ECHR in public but still willing to pull out or modify our relationship with the ECHR in the future depending on circumstances and other trade-offs.
DiscoveredJoys
I see your point – but the pressure on a person does not get less when they get into office – the pressure gets worse (much worse).
If someone will not commit to needed policies even in opposition…..
Still we must hope for the best – and Kemi is a good person and good Conservative, and some of the comments in this thread are horrible.
I met Kemi a few times around the period of that hacking. I approve of her generally, even if I’ve no doubt at all that we could find things to disagree upon. Broadly, in general, on the correct side of most questions I’d say.
As to the hacking. Not the most difficult thing in the world. The user name was Harriet, the password Harman. Worrying that someone who could set up a website with that has had significant political power in our fair nation, no?
Tim Worstall – agreed Sir. I think that Kemi is on the correct side of most political and cultural questions.
However, there will be no General Election for five years – this country will go through terrible times over the next five years, truly terrible times. I could describe what will happen – but I would not be believed (because it is going to be so bad) and there is nothing that can be done to prevent anyway – not now.
The United States will also go through terrible times – regardless of who is declared to have won the Presidential election. But if Trump/Vance are the victors there is a chance that liberty will survive – if Harris/Walz are declared the victors, I believe there is no chance that liberty will survive.
The story of “the West” (not just the United States) in terms of liberty, will be at an end.
If so, Kemi did a favor to Harriet, by making her aware of her vulnerability.
@Snorri Godhi
If so, Kemi did a favor to Harriet, by making her aware of her vulnerability.
Or perhaps more importantly making the British people aware of what an incompetent moron she is. Though TBH she made that apparent with her performance at the despatch box. However, as far as I know she is retired from politics.
BTW I looked at the article in the link provided by Martin.
In my arrogant opinion, Harrison Pitt is grossly mistaken in accusing Kemi of “anti-white bigotry”.
In the 2 instances that he mentions, what Kemi did was to use verbal ju-jitsu: she exposed her opponents’ hypocrisy without explicitly accusing them of hypocrisy. No reasonable person would interpret that as bigotry.
As for the rest of the article, all what i can say on the record is: no comment.
I might proffer an opinion a few years from now.