Politics: not goodenough

By Richard North - November 3, 2024

In March 2022, the then minister of state for equalities wrote in a foreword to an official report:

If there is one thing at the heart of this government’s agenda, it’s that anyone in this country should be able to achieve anything, no matter where they live or come from. As a black woman, a first-generation immigrant and the Minister for Equalities, I passionately believe in this idea too. It is my lived experience.

Should it be held to be true that anyone currently in the UK should be able to achieve anything, “no matter where they live or come from”, then we have effectively ceased to be a nation.

If any foreigner can rock up to this island and then, for instance, become and MP followed by leader of the Conservative Party, then there is no premium for being a natural born citizen. The indigenous population have no more rights than incomers, who may or may not have a commitment to the country.

Yet that self-described black woman, a first-generation immigrant, by the given name of Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke, has now been elected leader of the Conservative Party. This should not be.

I care not that she is black, although I would rather the leader of the oldest political party in England were white, thus representing still (but not for that much longer) the predominately white population. But I do care that the woman who now calls herself Kemi Badenoch is categorically Nigerian.

If I had my way, unless they were born in the UK (with certain obvious exceptions such as the offspring of military or diplomatic personnel posted overseas) to natural-born British parents, no person should be allowed to become an MP or hold any elected office. Nor should they normally be allowed to hold senior posts in the civil service or local government.

Further, I do not believe that first generation immigrants should be allowed to vote and, for the first three generations of any immigrants, there should be a special class of citizenship which can be summarily revoked for certain reasons – such as committing serious criminal offences or failing to be economically self-supporting.

The right to family life, for immigrants, should be abolished, so that there is no automatic right to family reunion, allowing so-called “anchor” immigrants to bring their relatives into the country.

Some, but not all of that might have come to pass had the Tories chosen Robert Jenrick as their leader and a newly-elected Conservative government been able to denounce the ECHR and carry out other essential and common-sense reforms relating to immigration.

But, with the election of Badenough (as I prefer to call her) we have lost any chance of that happening, tenuous though it might have been. We are now in the hands of a politician who believes that the UK is a “multi-faith, multi-ethnic, multicultural success story” and that “many of our greatest strengths derive from the diversity of our population”.

The grieving parents of three young girls in Southport – to name but a few – might disagree, and any number might dispute Badenough’s assertion that “one only has to look at our brilliant NHS … to see the benefits of being an open, tolerant and welcoming country”.

But so far has public discourse in this country degraded that even to question such absurd statements, much less question the selection of a Nigerian as leader of the Conservative Party is to invite accusations of racism.

The objection to Badenough, though, is not that she is black, but that she is Nigerian. Those who so freely throw up accusations of racism would do well to note that Nigeria is a multi-ethnic society – albeit not a very successful one in a land stricken by a low-grade civil war and sectarian strife.

The country has over 250 ethnic groups, the most populous and politically influential being Hausa-Fulani comprising 29 percent of the population, the Yoruba (21 percent), Igbo (Ibo) at 18 percent, the Ijaw 10 (percent), Kanuri (4 percent), the Ibibio (3.5 percent) and, the Tiv (2.5 percent)). It also has over 500 languages, although English is the official language.

Politically, the country is a mess. In simplified terms, it can be broken down between the predominantly Hausa-Fulani and Kunari, and Muslim, northern states, the predominantly Igbo, and Christian, south-eastern states, the predominantly Yoruba, and religiously mixed, central and south-western states, and the predominantly Ogoni and Ijaw, and Christian, Niger Delta region.

Essentially, this breaks down into the “Muslim north” and the “Christian south” regions which are finely balanced in terms of numbers, and thus regularly competing for “a winner-take-all fight for presidential power between regions”.

Managing this diversity and developing a national identity, we are told, has been, and continues to be, a challenge for Nigerians and the Nigerian government, especially between its “Muslim north” and “Christian south”. Fears of ethnic and religious domination are long-standing and routinely provide “flashpoints for violence”, with an estimated 62,000 Nigerian Christians murdered by Islamist jihadist groups since 2020.

To claim to be Nigerian, therefore – as does Badenough – is not to establish a racial identity. Rather, it is to establish a nationality. Nigeria is a country, not a race.

Given the state of the country – and the fact that it could be hardly more different from the UK – it hardly seems to be unreasonable to dispute whether someone with a Nigerian background and upbringing can properly represent the indigenous peoples of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

To express reservations is not a racial sentiment, and it is one the people of Britain are entitled to make, if they so choose. I am strongly of the view that it is extremely unwise to have a foreigner from such an alien nation leading any UK political party.

In particular, I resent the idea of someone from such a dysfunctional nation as Nigeria lecturing us on issues such as diversity, where her multi-ethnic nation suffers the routine slaughter of some of its groups from uncontrolled Jihadists. If Badenough has any talents, maybe she should apply them in her own country.

That, apparently, she contemplated in 2005, but the prospect was too daunting so she took the easier course as a diversity hire, recruited by Tory chairman Francis Maude, looking to make the party more diverse.

Ironically, though, this woman holds office on the most slender of grounds. She was elected by only just over half of the mere 94,000 Conservative members who bothered to vote, and has the lowest level of support among her party in both absolute and percentage terms, of any victorious candidate in its history.

She has achieved the lowest share of the vote in an election with only two candidates in an analysis of the three major party leadership contests since 1976. On a turnout of 72.8 percent (compared with a turnout of 82.6 percent in 2022), only 40.9 percent of Tories actually voted for her.

Even then, were she some exceptional politician with a magic touch which would somehow re-energise the Tories (and the nation), there might be some excuse for electing her.

But, as Pete points out – having looked at the woman more closely than I have – she has no redeeming features.

She bleats about bureaucracy and net-zero but is not going to leave the Paris Agreement nor repeal the Climate Change Act, nor even disband the Climate Change Committee.

Like Sunak – another foreigner with little empathy for the British – she will fiddle around the edges, shuffling a deadline this way or that and then end up having to make U-turns when NGOs take the government to court.

Meanwhile, she’s not going to quit the ECHR or repeal the Human Rights Act, so she won’t fix the asylum problem. Instead, she intends to “lead by consensus”, which means bowing to the One Nation wets on every issue of importance. Nothing she does will arrest the Tory decline. She is, says Pete, “a profoundly unserious politician”.

For my part, my immediate reaction on Twitter was that the Conservative Party had decided to commit ritual suicide – not only choosing a Nigerian leader but a person who is temperamentally wholly unqualified to lead a political party.

This is a tremendous, if undeserved, boost for Reform UK and a slap in the face for the nation. In my view, the Tories have set themselves on a path to lose the 2029 election. However awful Starmer might be, there are many people who are not prepared to vote for a Nigerian as prime minister.

And nor is there anything to be gained from doing so. Her presence just removes the possibility of a genuine Conservative government for a generation, leaving undone many of the things that really matter, and which can only be done by a genuine Conservative government.

Put simply, Badenough isn’t goodenough.