Overshadowed somewhat by the Budget, the US presidential election, wars in the Middle East and even the national debate on how to keep pets calm on fireworks night, the Conservative Party leadership contest is reaching a crescendo.
Individual party members are voting, and the result will be announced on Saturday. In these final days, candidates Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are making a final push for support and Jenrick has been saying some more controversial stuff…
What’s ‘Bobby J’ on about now?
The British Empire. Piling into the latest “culture war” – this time over whether Britain should pay reparations for slavery – Jenrick has gone on the offensive, in all senses of the term. Rather than saying sorry for the slave trade and centuries of brutal oppression and plunder, Jenrick says Britain’s former colonies should be thanking their former imperial masters because they “owe us a debt of gratitude for the inheritance we left them” in the form of legal and democratic institutions”. He adds: “The territories colonised by our empire were not advanced democracies. Many had been cruel, slave-trading powers. Some had never been independent. The British Empire broke the long chain of violent tyranny as we came to introduce – gradually and imperfectly – Christian values.”
Is he right?
Not really. In most of the empire – ie territories such as Australia that were not extensively colonised by Europeans – the British did not spend much time on building democratic institutions, and economic development was for the benefit of the mother country; a cheap source of food, raw materials and indeed troops in two world wars.
The arrival of Christian missionaries was neither universally welcomed, nor was Christianity necessarily a creed superior to those they previously held. Many colonies had been “independent” in the sense of not being dominated by anyone, and even if they were it doesn’t make it OK for the Europeans to take over. Their borders were defined by the people who lived there, and not by arbitrary lines on maps drawn by statesmen at international conferences in Europe. The scramble for Africa, in particular, left many future independent states politically unstable and economically unviable as a result of decisions made in London, Berlin, Paris, Lisbon and Madrid. By the time the British were forced out of their imperial possessions, many of these nations were poorly prepared for self-rule and some, notably British India, Ireland and Palestine, were partitioned with long-lasting consequences.
Why does Jenrick say this stuff?
As a former Remainer and liberal Cameroon and Sunakian, Jenrick’s views seem driven by cynicism, and he’s suffered from a perception he’s not as “authentic” as Badenoch.
If it’s possible to be a “Poundshop Nigel Farage” then Jenrick must be it. His campaign has been based firmly on the (admittedly reasonable) assumption that whoever is the more right-wing of any pair of candidates presented to the 140,000 Conservative members will win. Thus, Jenrick has placed immigration at the centre of his campaign to solve Britain’s problems; with Enoch Powell-style logic, Jenrick says this means leaving the European Convention on Human Rights. But the members aren’t that convinced by him.
Who’s winning?
Not Jenrick. It’s almost universally acknowledged that Badenoch is once more in the lead, where she started after the election defeat, and before Jenrick and then James Cleverly made a spirited challenge to her pole position over the autumn. In recent days she’s openly been softening the edges of her “combative” personality, and has gone out of her way to be a "unity" candidate, admitting she doesn’t have all the answers, courting the centre left of the party and winning over the likes of Damian Green, ex-head of the One Nation Group. She’s also said she’d like all her five rivals, including Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat as well as Jenrick and Cleverly in her shadow cabinet. Badenoch is also travelling light on policy commitments, which helps.
It would be a shock if she doesn’t become leader. The hard slog begins on Saturday.
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