Four months after suffering a devastating defeat at the last general election, the Tory Party finally has a new leader.
Kemi Badenoch takes over the helm of His Majesty’s Official Opposition, after gaining 57 percent of the vote – and beating fellow ultra-right-wing headbanger Robert Jenrick – in the latest Tory leadership contest.
The 44-year-old MP for North West Essex becomes the sixth Tory leader in less than nine years: a symptom of the longrunning crisis and chaos inside the Conservative Party.
At their height, the Tories were considered the most successful bourgeois party in the world. But in recent years and decades, reflecting the long-term decline of British capitalism, the ruling class’ traditional political representatives have themselves undergone a process of putrefaction and degeneration.
Badenoch herself has recognised and emphasised the critical state that the Tories now find themselves in: reduced to just 121 MPs and 24 percent of the vote at the last election, and with a record-low party membership composed of 132,000 ‘swivel-eyed loons’.
Yet it was precisely these frothing Tory ranks that the uber-reactionary candidate appealed to in order to secure victory in the race to replace Rishi Sunak.
War on workers
As part of her campaign, Badenoch co-authored an essay entitled “Conservatism in Crisis”, deludedly blaming her predecessors for “talking right, but governing left” and allowing the “rise of the bureaucratic class”.
In turn, as leader, she has promised to “tell the truth”, “renew” the Tory Party, and return it to “first principles”.
What this means, exactly, has so far been left purposefully vague by Badenoch. But the outlines of her programme are clear. What she is offering is reheated Thatcherism: attacks on the working class, the poor, and the vulnerable, alongside continued culture wars.
In her acceptance speech on Saturday, 2 November, Badenoch declared that it is “time to get down to business”. But she may really have meant “time to get into bed with business”, given her libertarian agenda aimed at stripping away regulations on behalf of the bosses and bankers.
In recent months, she has notoriously described the minimum wage, maternity pay, and taxes on employers as “excessive”; suggested that the civil service – the so-called ‘blob’ – should be decimated, with a sizeable slice sent to prison; proudly described herself as a “net-zero sceptic” in regards to climate policy; and unsurprisingly shown no qualms about further opening up the NHS to private profiteers.
The UK has one of the lowest rates of maternity pay, but Kemi Badenoch thinks it’s too high. Quite a surprising attitude for a woman who is definitely working class. pic.twitter.com/3L9bNir7Uc
— Parody Keir Starmer (@Parody_PM) September 29, 2024
And no doubt Badenoch will also have trade unionists, Palestine protestors, and migrants in her sights as she looks to swerve the Tories to the right, in an effort to outflank Nigel Farage and his Reform UK outfit.
Class enemy
Despite all this, the Labour leaders have welcomed Badenoch’s election, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and foreign secretary David Lammy proclaiming that it is a “proud” and “important moment” for Britain to see its “first Black leader of a Westminster party”.
“I look forward to working with you and your party in the interests of the British people,” Starmer sickeningly stated, congratulating his new counterpart. Lammy, meanwhile, tweeted that Badenoch’s success was a sign of progress “not only for Brits from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds, but for our whole country”.
Congratulations, @KemiBadenoch.
Your election as the first Black leader of a Westminster party is an important moment not only for Brits from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds, but for our whole country. https://t.co/s7Qa42f0Lj
— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) November 2, 2024
Indeed, ordinary Black and Asian communities will no doubt be rejoicing this history step – just as they will have celebrated the ‘diversity’ of the previous Tory cabinet, with senior ministers including Rishi Sunak, James Cleverly, and Suella Braverman bringing delights such as the hostile environment, the Rwanda deportation plan, and racist policing.
Similarly, women in Britain must be overjoyed at seeing another reactionary female political leader in Parliament, following in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May, and Liz Truss – all paragons of equality.
While Starmer and Lammy offer such nauseating, cynical tributes, Badenoch herself downplays her identity.
As a member of the political establishment, she is more interested in stressing her capitalist credentials, with a proven track record of pushing vicious policies that hit minorities, women, and the oppressed as part of the Tories’ “war on woke”.
Just like the rest of the Tory Party that she now leads, Badenoch is a class enemy through and through.
Instability ahead
Surveying the UK’s political landscape, the ruling class is filled with a sense of dread.
The serious strategists of British capitalism can see that Labour’s authority is rapidly evaporating, as Starmer’s government gets battered by turbulent economic and political storms.
Their other main party, meanwhile, has been taken over by an unreliable, reckless, self-serving mob of careerists and zealots.
And such is the dysfunction and anarchy on the Conservative parliamentary benches, that there is no guarantee that their latest leader will even survive until the next general election.
All the while, opportunistic demagogues like Farage lurk on the sidelines, ready to take advantage of the growing anti-establishment anger in society.
All of this is a recipe for increasing political polarisation, fragmentation, and radicalisation – and with this, for an intensification of the instability and volatility that haunts British capitalism and its representatives.
