Robert Jenrick is a monster; a smooth-faced one, but no less monstrous for that. His notorious banning of cartoon figures painted on the walls of a reception centre for unaccompanied child immigrants, because they seemed too ‘welcoming’, will surely repel any decent human being – among whom there must be some Conservatives. He also wants Britain to withdraw immediately from the ECHR, which was his particular bête noir as Immigration Minister; has claimed (approvingly) that British forces kill rather than arrest enemies in order to prevent their being examined under ECHR rules; and has recently revealed himself as a champion of Donald Trump. How much lower could he get?
Well, quite a bit lower, if the rumour surrounding him currently is true. That is, that he has vouchsafed to the Left of his party (such as it is) that he would ‘pivot back to the centre’ if elected Leader, in order to get their support. He’s denied it. (See https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/oct/11/robert-jenrick-denies-he-would-drop-hard-right-policies-if-he-became-tory-leader.) But it still leaves a doubt; and if true would confirm the suspicion that he is only adopting these far-Right policies for tactical reasons – in order to spike the ‘Reform’ party – and not out of genuine conviction. Which in my book would make him even more of a villain; and would also place him in the company of all those other Tories (led of course by Boris) who regard politics as mainly a game.
Is Kemi Badenoch any better? Maybe decent Tory decent members should abstain in the vote, thus undermining the credibility of whichever of them wins.
(‘AbsentMindedCriticofEmpire’, incidentally, is good and right on Jenrick, in his comment on my last post.)
Porter’s Pensées 
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‘Is Kemi Badenoch any better than Robert Jenrick?’ is a good question that is not easy to answer. My feeling is yes, but only slightly, and there is a lot we still don’t know.
One of the striking things about her conference speech was its vagueness. She made a virtue of not outlining specific policies. She was going to review absolutely everything that the executive does and some of what the judiciary does. Now journalism abhors a vacuum, and John Harris, taking his line from John Mortimer of the Byline Times, has suggested in the Guardian that this presages a British “Project 2025”. Project 2025, of course, is the Republican right’s wet dream, so sensitive it hasn’t been openly endorsed by Trump or even by JD Vance, even though Vance is well connected to the report’s sponsors, the Heritage Foundation. It goes beyond conventional free market neoliberalism to envisage politicising the civil service, giving parents more control over teachers and the content of school education, opposing anti-racist initiatives in education, returning the USA to Reaganite social conservatism and a lot more besides. It emphasises making the family the centre of American life, defending national sovereignty and dismantling “the administrative state”. The New York Times has aptly dubbed the aim of the project as “institutionalizing Trumpism”. It is this goal that makes it so much more far-reaching than traditional Thatcherite free-market doctrines. It threatens to make democracy illiberal.
Now this is all very alarming, but in Mr. Mortimer’s article he provides no specific evidence that KB’s plans are based on Project 2025: it’s guesswork, not necessarily wrong, but I believe premature. Another online vlogger notes that Badenoch’s “Renewal 2030” sounds a bit like “Project 2025” and claims that she has spoken at Heritage Foundation events. I am open to correction, but I can find no evidence for the latter claim, even on the HF’s website: the only article briefly referencing her (as a “rising star”) is actually a profile of Liz Truss. The transatlantic social network of right-wing gurus is densely interconnected, so there are a couple of indirect links: one via an anti-net zero group to a Project 2025 author and another via the LGB Alliance to a Heritage Foundation speaker. These are insufficient to amount to proof that she intends to implement Project 2025, though there is plenty to be concerned about in her ideology.
She does have links to the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs. These are familiar names associated with hardline neoliberal economics. Badenoch indicated at conference that her possible targets would include civil service reform – doubtless via politicisation – and net zero, no doubt encouraged by a donation from climate change sceptic Neil Record. A revived Thatcherism under Badenoch could do just as much damage as before to the UK, and both the economy and social fabric are weaker than in the eighties, not to mention the state of the environment. Her views on climate change are indeed ironically anti-Thatcherite, but maybe that’s the difference between a chemist and an “engineer”. (I’m a bit leery of the title “systems engineer” as though IT workers are the heirs of Isambard Kingdom Brunel when they’re mostly more like Chris O’Dowd. I bet Brunel never told the captain of the SS Great Britain to fix a problem by just stopping the ship’s engine and then starting it up again.) Badenoch will also take a strongly pro-Israel line in foreign policy. All depressing stuff, but there is this difference between the three groups named and the Heritage Foundation: all are libertarian in outlook, rather than socially conservative.
Ironically, what John Mortimer and John Harris both overlook is that Robert Jenrick actually does have connections to the Heritage Foundation. He went to speak to them on immigration in February 2024. Lord Frost and Daniel Hannan are connected to it, and both support Jenrick. As the notion that Jenrick is a secret centrist, it must be remembered that this story leaked while Jenrick was seeking the votes of Tugendhat and Cleverly supporters. Matthew Parris, in a devastating piece in The Times today, sees Jenrick as a man defined by nothing but personal ambition, who has made irresponsible commitments. We also know that (1) Jacob Rees-Mogg suggested a pact with Reform UK to give them a free run in about 100 seats; (2) Jenrick wants to make Rees-Mogg chair of the Conservative Party and (3) Jenrick wants every future Conservative candidate to be formally committed to withdrawal from the ECHR. That’s a pretty strange set of actions for somebody planning a switcheroo back to the centre ground; indeed (3) would probably force out a lot of Tory moderates, including the likes of Badenoch supporter David Davis.
By contrast, refusing to commit to leaving the ECHR, as Badenoch has, is not what one would expect from a Project 2025 supporter. At another gathering of right-wing nutters (sorry, thinkers), the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, Badenoch attacked Florida governor Ron De Santis for using taxation to punish Disney for criticising his anti-LGBT stance. For Badenoch, capitalism trumps social conservatism. Admittedly, to trans activists Badenoch is a social conservative. But as we have seen with the likes of JK Rowling and Rosie Duffield, the sands of what is socially liberal are ever-shifting. However “conservative” JKR appears now, her pro-single parent activism is a million miles from the pro-family, anti-abortion outlook of the Heritage Foundation right. It is also worth noting that Badenoch’s supposed mentor, Michael Gove, is viewed as a social liberal who believes in a “broad church” Conservative Party. Badenoch is also known to be hostile both to Braverman and to Farage, and has called Reform UK false Conservatives.
If Badenoch is more socially liberal than Jenrick, why does she have such a reputation as a culture warrior? I think there are two reasons. One is temperamental, the other political. As it happens, today marks the award of the Nobel Prize for Economics to Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, authors of “Why Nations Fail”, a book which Kemi Badenoch says is important to her. Notoriously, at a speech in the City, she poured cold water on the view that historically, British economic growth was “down to” imperialism, colonialism and white privilege, or that it was “only” due to these. This then got picked up critically by the Guardian, then supportively by the Institute for Economic Affairs, then finally for the IEA paper to be forcefully rebutted by the historian Alan Lester (note: Badenoch made her speech based on the Acemoglu and Robinson book, not on the IEA pamphlet, contrary to what some such as Will Hutton believe). In the course of the debate, the ground shifted from the relative importance of domestic institutions as against imperial trade to a focus on the contribution of slavery to the industrial revolution. The odd thing about this is that Badenoch let it all rage without clarifying an important point: “Why Nations Fail” is not remotely a justification of slavery, nor a minimisation of its contribution to British growth. Anyone familiar with the book will know that it views slavery as a regressive, extractive institution. Neither does it endorse imperialism. While the British Empire comes off slightly better than the Spanish in limited ways, the book is generally critical of colonialism for its failure to spread inclusive institutions. The book does place its main emphasis on institutions – the authors specialise in “the New Institutional Economics” – but it notes that slaves were “savagely exploited” in the Caribbean, that planters made “huge fortunes” and that plantation slavery could generate growth, just not (according to the authors) long-term sustained growth. The quantification of the role of slavery in the industrial revolution is not addressed. Badenoch could easily have said a lot of this, but chose not to, maybe because she enjoys ruffling a few feathers. Politically, “culture wars” are a way for her to try to connect with the “red wall” voters that Reform UK is targeting. Given her refusal to set a numeric limit on immigration, I expect her to emphasise her political incorrectness even more, to try to change the conversation away from Farageism.
To sum up, the chief difference between Badenoch and Jenrick is that the former is interested chiefly in free markets, deregulation and low taxation, whereas the latter wants to ride the tiger of Farageism. Whether the darkness has truly entered Jenrick’s heart I don’t know; but if he isn’t prepared to sell his soul to the devil, he’s certainly willing to lease it out long-term. In practice, whoever wins is going to be caught between the need to win back Reform voters and the need to win back centrist voters. Early by-elections will be crucial in deciding whether Reform can be strangled at birth. If not, Britain will have a divided right similar to that in France. Under Jenrick, I think that dilemma will be resolved by fusion. Under Badenoch, Tories and Reform will be bitter rivals with an uncertain outcome. It’s a darkening horizon.
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Thank you so much for this. Much wiser and more knowledgeable than my post. But I’m puzzled why you waste your wisdom on such an insignificant blogsite as mine. It should be broadcast more widely. – That’s not intended to put you off – not at all.
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My apologies for the length of the post, and thanks for the opportunity to comment.
The trouble with deciding the lesser of two evils is that, like the famous “trolley problem”, in the end you’re choosing an evil. I certainly don’t feel very wise – just look at the horrible row over Badenoch and autism that blew up after I’d written my post. It’s Hobson’s choice.
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