Kemi Badenoch’s time is up!

[Pickman's model]

Rebecca Harris, or Becky as she's no doubt known to Kid Eternity, is Badenoch's first shadow cabinet appointment.

Rebecca fucking who?

k_e calls her becks, and calls her often

 

[Lotte]

Of course Spiked love her. Also, no, we do not need a leader who wants to fight the culture war, because the culture war does not matter. It is irrelevant. Especially to people who are worried about paying the bills or rent. The only people it matters to are tedious right-wing columnists who think everything they hate is woke.

Also, I'm sure plenty of her allies want to chop gay kids up. Remember the kids who murdered Brianna Ghey? They were homophobes as well. As if Spiked give a shit about LGB kids anyway.

 

[Lotte]

Pmsl at her thinking maternity pay is "excessive". Do you think she knows that it's only about £185 a week after the first 6 weeks?

She probably spends more than that on a weekend's shopping.

But she cares so much about protecting women and girls!

 

[PR1Berske]

This has just appeared as the top story on the Guardian website. Why the ads want me, a middle aged underachieving desk monkey from Lancashire without a degree, to be deputy team leader of the Havering transport dept. is anybody's guess.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Rebecca Harris, or Becky as she's no doubt known to Kid Eternity, is Badenoch's first shadow cabinet appointment.

Rebecca fucking who?

We call her Becks actually.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

This has just appeared as the top story on the Guardian website. Why the ads want me, a middle aged underachieving desk monkey from Lancashire without a degree, to be deputy team leader of the Havering transport dept. is anybody's guess.

View attachment 449630

The problem is twofold;

Many of them are considered on the left so Starmers team will see this as a political attack, also Starmer is basically useless in the subject of representation in this area, and doesn’t value it.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

I think Kemi really is the best choice for the Tory party. She’s stern, inflexible, and will present herself as a Thatcher figure which they like.

 

[Elpenor]

This has just appeared as the top story on the Guardian website. Why the ads want me, a middle aged underachieving desk monkey from Lancashire without a degree, to be deputy team leader of the Havering transport dept. is anybody's guess.

View attachment 449630

Havering seems quite an apt place for some posters to work

 

[PR1Berske]

I think Kemi really is the best choice for the Tory party. She’s stern, inflexible, and will present herself as a Thatcher figure which they like.

But maybe not what's best for the country eh

 

[Kid_Eternity]

But maybe not what's best for the country eh

Indeed.

 

[pbsmooth]

From the Gdn asking Tories in Henley what they think:
“As a party member, Collins voted for Robert Jenrick as leader, but admired Badenoch’s social conservatism. “I particularly like her stance on overly woke issues,” he said. “I think being a black woman will make it much much harder for anyone to criticise her views.””

And there we have it.

 

[hitmouse]

etc. etc. etc.
Concluding


I would provide a link but I'm sure people can find this for themselves.

Noticeable that O'Neill's list of her virtues manages to list "she doesn't like trans people" in two separate ways.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

From the Gdn asking Tories in Henley what they think:
“As a party member, Collins voted for Robert Jenrick as leader, but admired Badenoch’s social conservatism. “I particularly like her stance on overly woke issues,” he said. “I think being a black woman will make it much much harder for anyone to criticise her views.””

And there we have it.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

This has just appeared as the top story on the Guardian website. Why the ads want me, a middle aged underachieving desk monkey from Lancashire without a degree, to be deputy team leader of the Havering transport dept. is anybody's guess.

View attachment 449630

Yeah, Labour's not great at diversity, never has been. I remember when I moved into this flat in Manchester 2003. Out of three councillors in my ward, two of them were called Murphy (unrelated). In fact of the 90 or so Manchester City Council councillors, there were more councillors called Murphy than there were Black councillors. In one of the country's largest cities, with one of the most diverse populations, I'm not even sure if they had any Black councillors back then, tbh.

 

[Pickman's model]

From the Gdn asking Tories in Henley what they think:
“As a party member, Collins voted for Robert Jenrick as leader, but admired Badenoch’s social conservatism. “I particularly like her stance on overly woke issues,” he said. “I think being a black woman will make it much much harder for anyone to criticise her views.””

And there we have it.

Clearly he hasn't heard of Diane abbott

 

[PR1Berske]

This from a Guardian profile:

[Badenoch] and her supporters call the people she has a problem with “the bureaucratic class”. Though it rather pains me to point it out, they sound distinctly like Guardian readers (and journalists). The text blames them for “a constant focus on economic and social redistribution to support the ‘marginalised’, the ‘oppressed’, ‘victims’ and ‘the vulnerable’” – categories that include “the poor”, as well as “women, LGBT people, ethnic or religious minorities, the disabled or neurodiverse, and migrants”. This mindset, the text goes on, leads inexorably to “the endless policing of our economy and society”.

What she offers as a remedy brings us to the other set Badenoch text: the climactic speech she gave at the Tory conference’s leadership hustings. “We are going to rewrite the rules of the game,” she said, serving notice of “a once-in-a-generation undertaking … The sort of project not attempted since the days of [Thatcher’s guru] Keith Joseph in the 1970s.” She aims, she said, at nothing less than “a comprehensive plan to reprogram the British state. To reboot the British economy … A plan that considers every aspect of what the state does … A plan that looks at our international agreements. At the Human Rights Act. The Equality Act. At judicial review and judicial activism, at the Treasury and the Bank of England. At devolution and quangos. At the civil service and the health service.”

 

[Dogsauce]

Isn’t that second paragraph exactly the sort of shit Truss was spouting? That went well.

 

[PR1Berske]

Isn’t that second paragraph exactly the sort of shit Truss was spouting? That went well.

Pretty much. Old Lizzie was unhinged, though, and to my eyes and ears Kemi is much more steely and focussed, there's a Guardian live blog still up from her time during the Brexit years where she effectively calls her backbench MPs to dumb to understand her while she plows on regardless. They've not had such a "my way or else" leader for a long long time.

 

[LakieLady]

Havering seems quite an apt place for some posters to work

I've always thought Havering sounds like something you do. Perhaps the sort of faffing about that happens when you're busy and can't really decide what to do next...

 

[Pickman's model]

I've always thought Havering sounds like something you do. Perhaps the sort of faffing about that happens when you're busy and can't really decide what to do next...

Havering is both a place and something you do when indecisive

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Pretty much. Old Lizzie was unhinged, though, and to my eyes and ears Kemi is much more steely and focussed, there's a Guardian live blog still up from her time during the Brexit years where she effectively calls her backbench MPs to dumb to understand her while she plows on regardless. They've not had such a "my way or else" leader for a long long time.

There’s a good reason for that too: the party is basically ungovernable, this is the central reason Rishi couldn’t do very much, he was constantly having to placate one faction or another…

 

[two sheds]

This from a Guardian profile:

Half way to Trump, too.

The idea of not criticizing Badenoch because she's black does seem very .... errrr ... woke

 

[Boo Radley75]

It's very weird. On one hand she makes her big issue to tackle about hating woke culture. On the other hand she is a woman, black and incompetent. If it wasn't her she'd be shouting that she only got the job because of her sex and the colour of her skin.

 

[Idris2002]

Pretty much. Old Lizzie was unhinged, though, and to my eyes and ears Kemi is much more steely and focussed, there's a Guardian live blog still up from her time during the Brexit years where she effectively calls her backbench MPs to dumb to understand her while she plows on regardless. They've not had such a "my way or else" leader for a long long time.

Not since Thatcher. . . People who initially dismissed Mrs T. soon realised their mistake.

 

[Idris2002]

Interesting Nigerian view of the Rise of Badenoch:

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Interesting Nigerian view of the Rise of Badenoch:

They make some interesting points, but ultimately they're still trying to dictate how someone else should feel about their identity. They're not so different from GarveyLives on here tbh, making a point about her having taken her husband's name. Would a black man who had married a white woman be being lazily defined by that fact in the same way?

The bloke in that is particularly bad. He references both her father and her husband. Defining her in terms of two men.

 

[Lotte]

From the Gdn asking Tories in Henley what they think:
“As a party member, Collins voted for Robert Jenrick as leader, but admired Badenoch’s social conservatism. “I particularly like her stance on overly woke issues,” he said. “I think being a black woman will make it much much harder for anyone to criticise her views.””

And there we have it.

It's really telling, isn't it. They can just point at her and go "well, THIS black woman agrees with us, ahhhhh take that wokes". Fuck off. She says stupid or bigoted things, she gets criticised and I'd argue it's actually kind of racist to say she should get a pass because she's black. Plenty of black people are bigots. Black churches in the US are notoriously homophobic, for instance.

 

[Idris2002]

The bloke in that is particularly bad. He references both her father and her husband. Defining her in terms of two men.

That's fair enough I suppose. But I was struck by the fact that one of the women on that panel disputed KM's claim to have been told to "get in the kitchen" as a high achieving young woman. She's from that background herself and doesn't find that credible. That's more than just trying to decide someone's identity - it's more about disputing the credibility of that person.

So how much credibility does KM have, as the first black woman to lead the conservatives? They didn't pick her because they've overcome their historic racism. What's happened is that their historic racism has evolved in step with the triumph of the finance capital wing of the party. That wing still needs to be open to the world, which is how they could tolerate Sunak as leader then and Badenoch now.

Will she tolerate them? She's a massively ambitious person, and she obviously doesn't take shit from anyone (if only she would use her powers for good and not for evil). If anyone can herd the cats of Toryism, it's her. My guess is that her time won't be up for quite some time yet.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

That's fair enough I suppose. But I was struck by the fact that one of the women on that panel disputed KM's claim to have been told to "get in the kitchen" as a high achieving young woman. She's from that background herself and doesn't find that credible. That's more than just trying to decide someone's identity - it's more about disputing the credibility of that person.

Yes. But the bloke's attitude doesn't exactly dispel the idea that sexist notions exist among elite Nigerian men.

And of course it is possible to have both. Communist-era Eastern Europe was a good example. Women could become doctors, engineers, anything they wanted. But they were expected to look after the home as well!

ETA: Unexamined sexist notions at that. I would wager that bloke doesn't realise he is being sexist when he refers to Badenoch's dad and husband in that way.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Will she tolerate them? She's a massively ambitious person, and she obviously doesn't take shit from anyone (if only she would use her powers for good and not for evil). If anyone can herd the cats of Toryism, it's her. My guess is that her time won't be up for quite some time yet.

Agreed on her ambtion and that she doesn't take shit. But, as her performance on the economy on the BBC yesterday demonstrated, she's far from the finished article.

As such a) she's going to need to learn and develop and b) like Thatcher, she's going to need an intellectual infrastructure (in aNd outside of the party) around her that can provide a compelling narrative that draws the string of Reform and also challenges the centrist orthodoxy of Starrmer.

That is clealry her plan. And whilst it's far from impossible - after all Reform (-Farage, immigration and culture war stuff) is a bad Thatcher tribute act and the type of clapped out, elite, censorious liberalism offered by Starmer has been rejected everywhere once voters have a taste of it, t's a task that normally splits open the divisions within Tory politics and brings their civil war into the open.

If Badenoch can perform the pivot without splitting the party she's in business. If she can bring Reform into some form of alliance, formal or not, then she's in business. If not, her time may be up within two years.