Why Some Labour MPs Fear a Kemi Badenoch led Conservative Party

Kemi Badenoch’s election as the Conservative party’s new leader will lead to jubilation in some parts of the Labour party.

The former Business Secretary’s spiky manner and tendency to say unpopular things, means that some Labour MPs believe the Conservatives have just gifted them the next general election.

However, not everyone in the party feels quite so relaxed about the prospect of her leading the Conservative party over the coming years.

Here’s what really concerns some Labour MPs.

Oppositionitis

While there are some Conservative MPs who feel depressed about the prospect of a long period in opposition, Badenoch does not appear to be one of them.

Addressing her party conference in Birmingham last month, the former Business Secretary said that she was actually “excited” to be out of Government, adding that “we are going to have fun”.

She wasn’t lying. Over the course of the conference Badenoch repeatedly hit the headlines for outlandish comments about maternity pay, the minimum wage and her suggestion that tens of thousands of civil servants should be thrown in jail.

Yet while commentators took this as evidence of her campaign melting down, the reality turned out to be entirely different.

Despite overwhelming headlines suggesting she had torpedoed her own campaign to the benefit of a man who had urged the party to be “more normal”, Badenoch actually went right to the top of the leadership ballot.

For her supporters, her ultimate victory in that contest is not a surprise. Contrary to conventional wisdom they believe she is exactly what the party needs to get itself noticed in opposition. Far from being a handicap, they believe Badenoch’s willingness to ‘say the unsayable’ is the key to getting the party heard after the biggest defeat in its history.

According to this view, Badenoch was the only candidate who is able to mimic Nigel Farage’s anti-establishment posture and therefore restore the party’s electoral fortunes.

There is some evidence to support this argument. Pollster Luke Tryl of the More in Common organisation has pointed out that Badenoch has been consistently the best received among former Conservative voters in focus groups, with participants praising her “fresh” and “strong” approach.

Others have pointed out that Badenoch’s love of culture war issues is likely to garner her a very warm reception from those parts of the British media whose business model increasingly depends upon inflating such issues.

One of her biggest supporters is the Sun and Times Newspaper owner Rupert Murdoch, who is said by insiders at the company to be a big fan of the new Conservative leader. Other supporters include her close ally and new editor of the Spectator, Michael Gove. Gove’s proprietor, GB News owner Paul Marshall is also likely to rally his outlets in her support.

For some Labour MPs Badenoch’s rise comes with other dangers.

“It’s really dangerous”, one Labour MP who is close to Starmer told me recently.

“You saw how the Tea Party movement took over the Republicans in the States and how they then ended up with a Trump presidency and again he’s now coming back after everyone thought he would never come back.”

“They’ve broken the system and it’s dangerous.”

For these MPs the threat is less that Badenoch could end up leading her party Trump-style back into government, although it remains possible, but that she could end up damaging our politics in her attempt to do so.

“You need a healthy democracy,” the MP said.

“And for a healthy democracy you not only need a healthy government but you need a healthy opposition.”

“And part of the reason why Boris could run roughshod in government is because we were not a good enough opposition under Corbyn. You need checks and balances. So on a political level I might love it, but for democracy it’s not good.”

Dragging Politics to the Right

The risk for the Conservative party in continuing to copy Reform UK’s politics is that they end up with Reform UK’s level of seats at the next general election.

For all the talk of “reuniting the right” it is simply not viable for the Conservatives and Reform to assume they can simply add their votes together and beat Labour at the next general election. For every step a Badenoch, or Jenrick opposition takes towards Nigel Farage, it is likely that their own traditional voters will simply take another step towards the Liberal Democrats instead.

However, just because the Reformification of the Conservative party may not win them the next general election, it does not mean that it cannot do our broader politics a lot of harm in the meantime.

The biggest risks from this approach is that it threatens to drag the Labour Government further towards the right. If Keir Starmer is faced with an opposition constantly banging on about “open borders”, trans rights and the ECHR – with the loud amplification of much of the British press – then those around Starmer may feel forced to take a step in that direction too.

The real risk of a Badenoch leadership is less that a lurch to the right could propel them back into office any time soon, but that it could help propel her form of hard-right politics to the centre of the national debate.

This threat is likely to be more real under a Badenoch Conservative party than it would have been under Jenrick.

According to multiple reports, Jenrick’s campaign quietly told his potential supporters that he planned to pivot back towards the centre ground of the party should he have won the leadership contest, in an apparent mirroring of the approach taken by Keir Starmer in opposition. Badenoch, by contrast, made no such suggestions.

The broader risk is that when you have the leader of a major political party openly backing the likes of Douglas Murray and Elon Musk, then it has an impact not just on politics in Westminster but on the wider culture in the country.

If you are Muslim, or a refugee, or a trans person living in the UK then the kind of political culture that will be stirred up by a Badenoch-led Conservative party will have deeply damaging real-world impacts. It should not be quickly forgotten that after the worst racist riots in generations this summer, Badenoch’s only significant intervention was to blame the unrest on a failure of “integration” by migrant communities, thereby effectively blaming the victims for the very crimes they were a victim of.

Her subsequent comments about not all immigrant cultures being “equally valid” was less of a dog whistle, than it was an outright foghorn.

As my colleague Peter Oborne has warned elsewhere, this is a very dangerous form of politics that should not be taken lightly by those in the Labour party currently rubbing their hands with glee about the prospect of her leading the party into the next general election.

So while Badenoch’s election may prove to be good news for the Labour Government’s electoral prospects in the long term, it could still to a lot of damage to our broader politics in the process.

A version of this article first appeared in the Folded with Adam Bienkov newsletter.