Speaking to the BBC last week, Michael Gove, former Cabinet minister, current Spectator editor, and future chief villain of The Plot 2: Election Boogaloo, was asked the inevitable question: Kemi Badenoch, or Robert Jenrick.
His answer was characteristically fair. Having backed Badenoch in 2022, it was no surprise that Gove described himself as “very fond” of her and praised her “courage”. “One of the criticisms directed at her is that she’s too willing to get involved in a scrap,” he noted. “I think that’s a virtue”. ConservativeHome readers have tended to agree with that assessment.
Badenoch is a self-declared truth-teller, a quality that inevitably irritates those who cannot handle the truth. Her performances at the dispatch box – redolent, a little, of her Conservative predecessor in the housing brief – show that Badenoch would not shy from the jousting of being Leader of the Opposition, even if she seems a little frit about debating her current opponent.
It was in his thoughts on that opponent that Gove generated more attention. “Robert’s strengths are diligence, rigour, hunger” – yond Jenrick has a lean and hungry look, and not only because of his dabble with Ozempic – and he is “focused on the big questions that have been the party’s internal conversation”. Migration, planning, the state of CCHQ – he plays all the greatest hits.
Yet he has a problem. “I think one of his weaknesses is that he looks like a typical Tory politician,” Gove enumerated. “And, given the strength of feeling against Tory Boys expressed at the last general election, that’s a challenge”. The tacit suggestion is that Badenoch is not similarly handicapped. Long suppressed memories of that Harry Enfield sketch bubble up.
Above, in an act of vanity, is a picture of myself speaking to Jenrick at a recent ConservativeHome jamboree. I step out from behind the curtain only to highlight that he and I, if Gove’s theory is correct, are in a similar boat. I go with the tweed in a vain attempt to stand out from the run-of-the-mill Westminster suit. But I’m not sure what I am if I don’t count as a Tory Boy. How tragic.
As a twenty-four-year-old not unburdened by ambition, I have a natural interest in asking whether the public has had enough of Tory Boys. Are the days in which a white, privately educated, Oxbridge, sensitive sort of chap could naturally expect to reach the apex of Conservative politics over? If so, I will have to break the news to Aloysius very carefully, over tea and crumpets.
The answer to that, one supposes, will be provided on November 2nd. But it is not an idea that Badenoch has chosen to disown. Last week, she leaned into her background, and said she would be “Labour’s worst nightmare”, on the basis that being black would shield her from left-wing charges of racism. With her, she suggests, “they will be unable to make the case convincingly”.
After the 2019 election, there were 87 Tory female MPs, and 23 from an ethnic minority (or the “global majority”, as per the BBC) background. In occupying both camps, Badenoch is thus especially unusual for a frontline Conservative politician. She would be the first black leader of a major British political party, boldly going where only Diane Abbott has tried to go before.
Compared to a Labour Party that, in over a century, has yet to manage even one female leader, let alone an ethnic minority one, that we were on our fourth of the former and second in a row of the latter would be a pleasing rebuke to the Left’s identitarians. That is not something Jenrick offers. Working out where the “Robert Generic” tag came from is not a job for Scooby Doo.
Yet – as Laurie Wastell points out on Gove’s website – Badenoch argued earlier this year that no “big deal” should be made of her being the first black woman to lead the Tories. Is our party not enthusiastic for meritocracy (except when considering reopening grammar schools)? Do we not champion the character-not-skin-colour approach to judging fellow members of the human race?
Badenoch would argue that her career owes nothing to identity politics, or the tokenistic enthusiasm for all-women short-lists and other Left-wing scale-weighting measures. Only knuckledraggers on Twitter make a fuss about her background. What matters are her ideas, not her name, skin colour, or childhood in Nigeria. We don’t begrudge Bonar Law for having grown up in Canada.
But the fact that she is the less “typical” of her and Jenrick cannot be avoided. Even if, as Wastell says, “anyone should be able to criticise the flawed logic of identity politics, regardless of their background”, there is no doubt that such criticisms generate more interest in public discussion when coming from her than him. Even as one laments it, identity politics proves inescapable.
Nonetheless, the idea that the Left would be unable to deal with Badenoch just because she is an ethnic minority Tory is for the birds. Did Labour go any easier on Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, or Rishi Sunak because of their backgrounds? Not at all. Europe’s Pant Suit Deportation phenomenon has yet to apply to ethnic minority Conservatives. They are not Labour’s nightmare.
Indeed, Badenoch is at her most unedifying when leaning into the identitarian angle, as with her spat with “rich, lefty, white male celebrity” David Tennant earlier this year. Perhaps she hoped to beat the Left at their own game. But, as Ben Sixsmith has highlighted, they are much more comfortable with – or much less conscious of – hypocrisy than we are. C’est la vie.
The more interesting element of Badenoch’s campaign is not her identity, but her promise: to break with almost three decades of the post-1997 political consensus. She charges the Tories with a complicity in a stale and dysfunctional status quo. Her campaign is called Renewal 2030 to highlight that her ideas, not her background or personality, are the crucial element of her pitch.
This makes Badenoch an interesting politician. But her arguments are similar to those of her opponent. His win would not represent a diversity milestone. But he could wear the mantle of ‘change’ en route to victory in 2029 just ably as would Badenoch. The spirit of Keith Joseph is with them both. Either would serve as an effective avatar for my Tory Leninist crusade.
Yes, after fourteen years, the public was tired of Tory Boys – and Tory Girls. They were sick of all Conservatives, no matter their sex, race, or creed. When we win again, it will not be because of our next leader’s background, but because of the honesty of their diagnosis of Britain’s problems, and Labour’s palpable failure to address them. Both Badenoch and Jenrick can do that.
I am loathe to challenge Gove on this, especially as a former Spectator intern. I would be happy if either candidate won, and I write this as a personal reflection, not to pronounce ex cathedra. But I must stand up for us Tory Boys. Jenrick’s background is no greater a barrier to victory at the next election than those faced by any other leader with only 120 fellow MPs and five long years.
But I would say that, wouldn’t I?
