ANDREW ROBERTS: The GOOD information for the Tories is that when you hold telling voters the reality, they’re going to reward you whenever you’re lastly proved proper
In opposition, she was accused of having ‘a desire for confrontation’ and ‘ceaseless and hectoring interruptions’.
Civil servants ‘treated her with scarcely veiled contempt’. Labelled ‘shrill’ and ‘strident’ – insults rarely applied to male politicians – the leader of the Conservatives faced palpable ‘rudeness’ and hostility, even from within her own party. She was ‘on a short fuse for much of the time’, complained one of her advisers, and ‘only partly because of the enormous pressures of the job’.
This stream of disobliging quotations is taken from Not For Turning, Robin Harris’s landmark 2013 biography of Margaret Thatcher.
But they will be all too familiar to Kemi Badenoch, who has faced her own deluge of criticism as she undertakes what is easily the worst job in British politics: Leader of the Opposition.
Yet there is another quotation from that same biography which applies: ‘It was the content of her thinking, the passion and directness of her words, which were the source of her impact.’
If you tell the British people the truth for long enough and eloquently enough, they will register it. And, while it might take them three or four years, they will reward you when you are proved right.
The truths Kemi is telling about the unsustainability of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s economic plans might fall on deaf ears today. Anger over the Conservatives’ failure to stick to their principles in government lingers. But as the end of this Parliament comes in to view in a year or two, the voters will remember that the Tory leader was correct – particularly when the bond markets call time on Labour’s financial incontinence.
They will remember, too, that it was Kemi who sounded the warning over Reform’s tax and spend policies, which if they were ever implemented, would create a bond crisis more quickly even than the one now staring Labour in the face. Kemi might sound like Cassandra, but by the time of the next election, people will choose on the basis of the economy. And only one of the six major political parties vying to govern is promising genuine fiscal responsibility.
Kemi Badenoch has faced a deluge of criticism as she undertakes what is easily the worst job in British politics: Leader of the Opposition
Voters will remember that it was Kemi who sounded the warning over Reform’s tax and spend policies
It’s true that Conservatives put up taxes during their time in office, but they hated doing so and will bring them back down as soon as possible, unlike their rivals.
Will Kemi stop French, Dutch and German human rights judges in Strasbourg telling us who can and cannot come into our country? Yes, she will. We can leave the European Convention on Human Rights through legislation and, while I don’t doubt there will be diplomatic consequences, I don’t doubt either that the supposed problems have been greatly overstated.
Will Kemi alter the Net Zero targets so that ordinary people and our hard-pressed manufacturers can afford their energy bills – while ending the absurdity of our buying dirtier energy from abroad to meet those targets? Yes, she will. A more sensible timetable for reducing emissions is easily achieved.
Will Kemi tackle the disgraceful situation whereby activist judges presiding over immigration tribunals laugh in the face of the British public? I believe she will. It will be a fight – there are constitutional difficulties involved – but it’s a good fight to have.
It is vital we put an end to headlines such as ‘Depressed fraudster deported to Ghana can return, judge rules’, ‘Nigerian romance fraudster avoids deportation thanks to family illness’ and ‘Pakistani paedophile allowed to stay in UK because of alcoholism’.
For a political party whose history dates to 1834 – and whose philosophy goes back more than a century before that – the Tories are certainly capable of getting themselves into a stew over setbacks they prefer to term ‘catastrophes’. They even do this when they are winning. The 1987 general election campaign was hit by a huge row over strategy between Downing Street adviser David Young (Lord Young of Graffham) and Norman Tebbit, yet Thatcher went on to secure a 102-seat majority.
As we have seen too often in the past 15 years, the Conservatives have the capacity not just to shoot themselves in the foot but to use a machine gun for the task.
By the time of the next election, people will choose on the basis of the economy. And only one of the six major political parties vying to govern is promising genuine fiscal responsibility
The reason the Conservatives have existed for so long is that their underlying principles are also those of the majority of sensible, patriotic Britons, writes ANDREW ROBERTS
Despite being reduced to a rump of 121 MPs, it seems they haven’t lost the taste for regicidal manoeuvring, with Tories from across the party lining up to criticise Kemi Badenoch, either sotto voce or more openly.
Yet the reason the Conservatives have existed for so long – and been in power for 94 of the past 150 years – is that their underlying principles are also those of the majority of sensible, patriotic Britons. That’s to say: the monarchy, strong armed forces, free markets, property rights, free speech, sanctity of contract, strictly restricted immigration and freedom of religion.
To these, we can add: British exceptionalism, help for the striving middle-classes, capitalism, deregulation, the right to privacy, reward for hard work, decency in public discourse, protection of family life, a war on crime, low taxes, a minimal state, strong military alliances against dictatorship, a small civil service and, for the past 80 years at least, free trade. These are the core beliefs that have served the Conservatives well – because they have served the nation well, too.
The electorate has not undergone some strange transformation. The British people will come back to the Tories, but only once they trust the party to stand by its principles.
The four most catastrophic electoral reversals in the past 120 years came when the voters concluded that the Conservatives had let them down. In each case they were right. In 1906, there was no great love for Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s Liberal Party, even though it won 397 seats to the Tories’ 156.
Rather, there was widespread contempt for a Tory party that seemed incapable of deciding whether they wanted a form of protectionism based on the British Empire – and, possibly, higher food prices – or not.
In 1945 the British people wanted to punish the Conservative-led National Government for its pre-war policy of appeasing Nazi Germany. Although the Conservative leader in that election, Winston Churchill, had been against appeasement, he accounted for only one constituency. Hundreds of other seats were contested by Tories who had voted for Neville Chamberlain’s despised Munich agreement.
In the event, Labour leader Clement Attlee won by 393 to 197 seats.
The 1997 election disaster, in which Tony Blair won 418 seats to John Major’s 165, was another case in which the Conservatives had let down the British people.
Allowing pro-European grandees such as Michael Heseltine and Douglas Hurd to dictate Conservative policy – rather than the more Eurosceptic MPs and party members – led directly to the worst catastrophe at the polls since 1832.
Even Major’s 1997 debacle was not as painful as last year, however, when Keir Starmer won 412 seats to the Tories’ paltry 121.
By 2024, the Tories had been promoting profoundly un-Conservative policies on everything from renters’ rights to regulating professional football teams. The electorate can smell inauthentic offerings, and the whiff was unmistakeable.
That will not happen with someone as principled, serious, committed and instinctively Tory as Kemi Badenoch at the helm.
She might be in her Wilderness Years now, but the lessons of history – Conservative history in particular – tell us Kemi must be listened to this week and given our wholehearted support.
Lord Roberts of Belgravia is a Conservative peer
