I have a rule. It’s a rule I shouldn’t need. It’s depressing that I do.
If you use Kemi Badenoch’s full name – which she does not, anymore than Zia Yusuf, Laila Cunningham, or Raheem Kassam do – or mention her Nigerian heritage in an online post, you are doing so , and for a reason. And at that point we can ignore your input.
It smacks of the abuse our black England players got for missing penalties. It’s crass, gutter stuff.
Kassam, a one time right hand man to Farage – though woe betide any suggestion he has designs on returning to that role – has recently been doing a lot of mentioning Badenoch’s Nigerian roots. He has described the Conservative leader in the past months online as a ‘’ and ‘’ and has now posted a video suggesting she was a ‘’ – which is odd because she voted for David Davies to be leader, but anyway.
It’s not strange that twenty four hours after Badenoch’s Conference closing speech that as I hoped ‘raise the roof’ in the ICC Symphony Hall, and was music to the party faithful (and I suspect, in time, beyond) that this third instalment of what Daily Mail commentator Dan Hodges has branded ‘a Nigeria strategy’ should be picked up and run with online by a number of ex-Tory Reform politicians.
Almost like it is orchestrated.
Kassam will claim it be racism because his parents were Tanzanian Muslim immigrants of Indian origin from Hillingdon. He doesn’t disguise or dispute this – despite not using his original middle name – and feels he’s someone British-with-heritage just exploring someone else’s.
Other views are this stream of online comment about her is what it looks like – whilst trying to disguise it’s about how she looks.
A political dog whistle designed from the States, where it’s worked in the past; remember Obama’s birth certificate.
Perhaps as they claim – but the timeline doesn’t match given when this started – it’s because Kemi spoke about it from the podium, in her most powerful repudiation of race wielded as political ammunition, or because she has made it abundantly clear that whilst she is not blaming Reform voters – indeed accepts those who used to vote Tory were let down by a confused Conservatism – she will not do deal with the top line up of Reform politicians.
It’s not really about that though. It’s that she has started to rattle Reform badly.
They claim they aren’t. They point to the fact the Tory’s polling is still not taking off, which no sensible Tory, even after this week, is saying is flying skyward. However Badenoch warned on the pages of this site:
“It’ll get harder before it gets easier, and in the first phase, I had that… it was harder, then it got easier. We’re in a new phase now.”
Reform aren’t rattled by Conservative polling; they revel in that. It’s they are scared of.
Nigel Farage is one of the most influential politicians of the last two decades, and the fact is, she’s better at it than him. And they know it. Oh, Reform are still popular, the Tory party slightly less so, but Badenoch is far more popular a personality than Farage in his current guise.
To borrow an analogy from Farage’s favourite historical era – about which he is astonishingly knowledgeable – is a source of great frustration that two years of relentless shelling of Tory lines from Reform’s trenches, has simply failed to kill them off in fact quite the opposite, it’s helped them come back fighting.
The Britishness, or how English one is, of a non-white politician is a debate and language that should be buried in our past. I always had half an eye out for it when working for Sir James Cleverly, because you sometimes caught the nasty whiff of an identity prism being applied to the would-be-Mayor of London.
I always liked his response:
“My mother was from Sierra Leone and came to this country from Africa in the 1960’s. My Dad’s family came over from France in the 1060’s”
Zia Yusuf preceded the Holborn and St Pancras by-election by commenting on the expected Labour Candidate – and as of this morning, MP – Sagal Abdi-Wali, a former child refugee from Somalia and the then leader of Camden council:
“The frontrunner being foisted on the people of Holborn by Labour to replace the former prime minister Keir Starmer in our parliament was born in Somalia. Do you understand what’s happening?”
Oh yes Zia, we do.
To you, it’s open season it seems, on the race to the bottom of identity politics, and heritage. By the way I’m not interested in his background but in his input into British politics and his personality, as a British politician. Neither of which I’m much impressed by.
Nor did the voters of the always heavily Labour seat, where this morning Reform came fourth, 2 points behind the Tories.
But before my readers, some of whom are dyed-in-the-wool Reformers, think I’m just aiming at their politicians, I will say this: other parties have been at this game for weeks and it had a denouement this morning.
Zack Polanksi, whose full name isn’t even Zack Polanski, lost last night – as I said he would from the start – his star waning quicker than Starmer’s did in government, and that was embarrassingly quick!
Polanski’s Greens – a colour now more appropriate for them for its religious connections, then anything leafy growing and organic – adopted at their Conference the motion “Zionism is Racism”, without a single word on whether antisemitism is.
As Badenoch said on Wednesday:
“You know what else is taking us backwards? The disgraceful antisemitism we saw at the Green Party conference in Brighton last weekend. They are seeking to erase Jewish identity. Shame on the Green Party and shame on Zack Polanski”
You know what was also shameless, and more so because it used national and international policy to achieve it?
Labour playing the same games, in order to ensure there was no possible chance of Burnham being tripped up by the nasty parting shot from his ousted rival, of walking away when he said he wouldn’t; the most Starmer-like act of Keir Starmer.
The Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu is not one I have time for. He’s passed his political sell by date, and bifurcated from the needs and rights of Israel since the horrors of October 7th, three years ago this week, to do ‘what’s best for Benji’.
That does not and never should distract from our support and friendship with Israel as a nation. And yet so much did Labour want to signal to its left flank it’s pro-Gaza credentials to win a by-election in London, it may well have helped Netanyahu with a general election in Israel.
I’m old enough to remember when critics of Badenoch said she needed to get a grip on the economy, immigration, and ditch the culture war on woke, soften her dislike of identity politics which they claimed was making her a polarising figure.
Well I’m disappointed, to say the least, how identity politics, race and heritage are now seen as absolutely normal weapons of choice in the fight she told Conference was coming.
It’s not coming. It’s already here.