The rise of Kemi Badenoch

The election of Kemi Badenoch as the leader of Britain's Conservative Party and therefore as Leader of the Opposition in Parliament reflects the sea change which has come over politics in the United Kingdom in the past two decades, if not more. It is today a growing racial mix in Britain, with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds making it to the centre and the top in the political arena. Badenoch is the latest in that line to have convinced Britain that change along racial lines is an incontrovertible fact of British society today. Enoch Powell is a forgotten story.

The arrival of Rishi Sunak earlier, as Chancellor of the Exchequer and then as Prime Minister, was a powerful sign of the change taking place across Britain's political landscape. Where a few generations ago politics was confined to local, meaning white, representatives of it, today it is a situation where politics is inexorably moving toward multi-culturalism. Badenoch has formed her shadow cabinet and into it has come Priti Patel, the political figure with Indian roots who has already served as Home Secretary under Boris Johnson. Patel will now be the Tory spokesperson in foreign affairs. [The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the government's chief financial minister and as such is responsible for growing the UK economy, raising revenue through taxation or borrowing and for controlling public spending.]

In recent times, the upward mobility of non-white politicians in Britain has been a remarkable sign of the cultural reconfiguring of politics. Kwasi Kwarteng, a brilliant writer who happened to serve briefly as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the embattled short administration of Liz Truss, is an instance here. Or take James Cleverly who, under Sunak, was Foreign Secretary. In the current Labour government, David Lammy is Foreign Secretary and so far has appeared to be doing the job well. Under Keir Starmer, Tulip Siddiq and Rushanara Ali, both of Bangladeshi origin, serve as junior ministers. Dianne Abbott till recently was a formidable figure in Labour Party politics.

Across the United Kingdom, scores of members of Parliament happen to represent a wide number of constituencies. A politician with a Pakistani background has served as First Minister of Scotland. Another non-white politician has been First Minister of Wales. Scotland's Labour Party has Anas Sarwar, a man with Pakistani roots, as its leader. In the Commons, Apsana Begum and Rupa Haq, with a Bangladeshi background, are active participants in the proceedings of the House. And let us not forget Suella Braverman, who has served in a recent Conservative government. There was Lord Ahmed, who served in the Foreign Office. In the current Labour government, Shabana Mahmood serves as Secretary of State for Justice. All over Britain are hundreds of local councillors and mayors who come from a diverse racial mix and have consistently proved their ability to represent their constituencies as people who are part and parcel of mainstream British society.

Kemi Badenoch's election as Tory leader points to an important fact, which is that it is only the second time, after Rishi Sunak, that a major political party has chosen an individual of a non-white background as its leader. The more remarkable fact here is that Badenoch has in recent months proved her qualities as a politician through edging out all her rivals for the party leadership before claiming the mantle herself. She has a clear understanding of where she wishes to take her party and will certainly be a formidable opponent for Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the House of Commons. She is a powerful speaker whose presence in the Commons will surely have sparks set off in the chamber.

The speed with which she has formed her shadow cabinet hints at the approach she means to take in shaping a new Conservative Party for the United Kingdom. With the new Labour government already under pressure, and facing criticism, over its recent budget --- Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been taking flak --- Kemi Badenoch will lose no opportunity to keep the new rulers on their toes. A quality with her is her view, stated publicly, of what she thinks went wrong with her party in its days in power. She is, in that sense, in the mould of Margaret Thatcher, ready to redefine and reformulate the goals of an organisation whose supporters have traditionally considered it the party of government. 

Whether Badenoch will one day be Prime Minister depends on two factors: the failure of the governing Labour Party to live up to popular expectations and the degree to which Badenoch and her team will be in a position to convince voters with pragmatic policies that they will be ready to lead Britain again. It will be an uphill climb for the Tories, especially in the aftermath of their devastating defeat at the last election. For Kemi Badenoch, it will be necessary to assert her control over her party without affecting the collegial nature of its leadership. That done, she will need to have credible programmes, in the economy, foreign affairs and law and order, which she and her colleagues can place before the electorate between now and the next election.

More significantly, Badenoch will certainly be taking a leaf out of the recent leadership changes in her party. David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak came and then fell in quick succession. It did not help the Conservatives any. On the contrary, it painted a picture of a party having lost its way and therefore in free fall. For Badenoch, the option is one: turn the party around and turn it into a cohesive unit ready to govern once again in the future. But that will be a task not easy. She will need to be careful about probable sniper attacks from potential rivals in the party should she be seen to be faltering as leader.

That said, Badenoch's rise to the top of the Conservative Party is symbolic of how vastly Britain's political landscape has been transformed in recent times. Hard work and principled politics today define the lives of political figures whose roots lie away from the United Kingdom but who serve Britain in commendable measure. It is change which testifies to the power of democracy to expand the many opportunities for those ready and willing to play their role in deepening and buttressing the joy which comes of an uninterrupted practice of political pluralism.

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