Kemi Badenoch’s speech drew a moral dividing line between Tories and Reform

Good morning. Kemi Badenoch made a major announcement on reforming inheritance tax in order to exempt family homes in her speech yesterday. But the most significant thing she did, in my view, was for the first time draw an explicit dividing line between the Conservatives and Reform UK. Some thoughts on that below.

Clear red line

The most important section in Badenoch’s speech directly addressed those in her own party calling to “unite the right” by reaching some kind of merger or alliance with Reform:

To those who say unite the right, we are not uniting with that.

People deserve better than that and we are going to give them better than that.

Character, conduct and standards matter.

I don’t want to live in a country run by people who threaten journalists, call veterans “traitors” and debate whether my mixed-race children are English.

I don’t want to explain to my son when we’re watching our brilliant England team play football that some people don’t think our black players are English.

I remember back in the day when Ian Wright and John Barnes were playing, nobody was questioning whether they were English.

We certainly didn’t have sitting MPs questioning whether they were English.

We must not let these people take us backwards.

That is not the country we are.

Reform MPs are openly questioning people’s identity.

They are not like us; we are not like them.

“They are not like us; we are not like them” is a sentiment that some senior Conservatives who are no longer on the frontline, such as John Major in his excellent speech earlier this year, have made publicly. Moreover, it is easy to hear this sentiment expressed privately, that the differences between the Conservatives and Reform are not differences of opinion of the normal kind that separate Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.

Rishi Sunak took on the growing debate about this in his Sunday Times column:

 We cannot have a situation where people who live here, who feel British, who embrace our culture and embody our values, who strive to be the best members of society they can be, are marked down because you won’t find their name in the Domesday Book.

Tactically, strategically and morally it is the right thing for Badenoch to have done.

Tactically, the Conservatives need to have an argument against Reform and parties yet further to their right that resonates. That senior members of Reform are now regularly suggesting that Sunak, Meera Syal, Bukayo Saka or Lenny Henry cannot really be English is something most people do not agree with and frankly makes them sound mad. It is simply good politics to point out that the Conservative Party does not believe mad, unpopular things and that Reform does.

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Strategically, while an awful lot about the next general election is hard to predict, I think it is safe to say that one attack line that will get a lot of play against the Tory party, from both the Lib Dems and Labour, is that a vote for the Conservatives risks letting Reform into power by the back door. “Don’t go to bed with Badenoch because you’ll wake up with Nigel Farage” could be really destructive to the Tories’ prospects.

It has not been helpful to the Conservatives that for much of the past two years, Tory frontbenchers have sounded as if they regard Reform as a lost sibling, that these extreme and corrosive positions about national belonging are ones they might themselves give house room to, and that their biggest underlying philosophical objection to Reform might be a difference of opinion on benefits spending. It was not good politics for Badenoch to stay silent when others on the right — including a man whose podcast she appeared on — argued that Sunak could not be English because he was a “brown Hindu”.

Remaining silent would have made it harder for the Conservatives to attract the professional voters they are courting with their plans to expand free childcare or cut inheritance tax. No viable Tory party can go into an election without a serious financial offer to workers at the top of the income distribution. But these offers are much less likely to win votes if people fear the party selling them is indifferent or actively hostile to them and their interests.

Most importantly, it was the right moral position to have drawn a clear red line on these topics. It was not a speech without risks because, having drawn a line, Badenoch will now have to police it. But it gives her party something it badly needed: a differentiator between it and Reform that is clear, popular and right.

Now try this

I’ve just finished Dark Reading Matter, the last in Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, a genre-bending collection about a detective agency inside fiction. This final instalment really is terrific: it leans heavily on both the fourth wall and the readers’ goodwill to carry off twists and turns, with some great jokes along the way. A really well put-together ending: new readers should give his first book, The Eyre Affair, a go as a starting point.

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