Victor Anderson tries to understand Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatism
“Conservatism in Crisis – Rise of the Bureaucratic Class” (Renewal 2030) : Introduction by Kemi Badenoch
This pamphlet was launched by Kemi Badenoch when she kicked off her campaign for the Tory Leadership. Known mainly for her militant approach to culture wars and what is charitably described as her “abrasive personality”, this document, signed and introduced by her, should provide some guide as to whether there is any deeper vision underlying the way she behaves and her choice of issues.
Given her prominence now as Leader of the Opposition, it is surprising how little attention has been paid to this text by Badenoch’s opponents, both within the Tory Party and outside it. This is maybe because, although it presents a big picture analysis, it is one which is hard to take seriously once you look beneath its surface slogans.
Following on from the general principle that “all history is the history of class struggles”, Badenoch sees the current period as one in which the central clash is between a class of people doing useful things and a class consisting essentially of useless parasites. The latter is described as “the bureaucratic class”. The key task for the Conservative Party is to fight them and their political leaders. Keir Starmer is described as “that embodiment of the bureaucratic class incarnate.”
This new class struggle involves war on many fronts: “There will have to be a new type of politics. To take on the bureaucratic class means to ditch radical environmental politics, unpick identity politics, focus on a strong positive national identity, limit migration, streamline HR, compliance, sustainability, planning, to focus on bringing down the cost of the welfare state and much more.”
On the other side of the barricades we find “the market class”. “The market class gives people what they want and will pay for, and the bureaucratic class gives people what the bureaucratic class thinks they should want and what government can force or require people to have.”
The market class influences society through the market but in recent decades it has been increasingly overruled by the bureaucratic class which has its power base in the state and related bodies such as quangos, regulators, universities, and those who administer the state’s rules within the private sector, such as in HR departments and health and safety.
This is why culture wars are so important to Badenoch. With the aid of the Daily Mail and other Tory newspapers, it is not difficult to find a steady stream of real or imaginary stories of bureaucratic interference, whether it is supposed attempts to ban full English breakfasts or cancel Christmas. Of course in the real world there are examples of regulations which are poorly worded or overzealously enforced.
However, the policy implications of this big picture analysis are worryingly Trump-like, as the mainstream Right, in the UK as well as the US, shifts from neoliberal faith in market forces to taking up, although often in a diluted and “civilized” form, the themes of the far right.
The pamphlet makes no mention of climate other than implicitly, turning it into a victim of the drive to “roll back the environmental laws”. It makes no mention of financial instability and crashes other than to criticize the growth of financial regulation. It makes no reference to Grenfell Tower other than to imply that the privatization, deregulation, and public spending cuts which bear large shares of responsibility for what happened there should be continued and taken further. It has no policy for the water industry other than to present Ofwat as too heavy-handed.
More fundamentally, “Conservatism in Crisis” fails to acknowledge that many of the regulations which exist have developed in response to the failings of the private sector and would be unnecessary if private companies took corporate social responsibility seriously and stopped prioritizing the interests of shareholders.
Badenoch and her colleagues – the pamphlet is signed by five other Tory MPs and a lot more former Tory MPs – rightly see the need for the Conservative Party to reinvent itself. A particularly striking statistic is that in the 2024 general election, the Conservatives came in 5th place amongst voters under 35, behind Labour, LibDems, Greens, and Reform.
The Starmer Government faces many difficulties and is upsetting large numbers of people. Opposition to it is growing, but we don’t yet know where opposition forces will gather. It could be a renewed Labour Left, Greens or others to the left of Labour, and it could be Reform. But if British politics turns back to anything like “business as usual”, it will be the main Opposition party, the Conservatives, who will benefit most. Running out of their own ideas, they are increasingly importing some from the US Republicans. If this pamphlet’s simplistic analysis is anything to go by, what they will be offering is a British version of Trumpism, their manifesto a ticket to Trump-land.