So here we are. Kemi Badenoch is the leader of the Conservative party. That’s another couple of firsts that the Tories have beaten Labour to. So far, the Conservatives have elected the first Asian leader and prime minister, and the first female Black leader of any major British political party.
But as these firsts started to come quicker and closer together – we now have a brown party leader handing over to a Black one – two things have happened. One, the politics of the party has become more unhinged and its electoral record has tanked. And two, the profile of these mould-breaking new leaders has become more extreme. The two are not unrelated to the success of ethnic minorities in the Tory party. I am sorry to point this out, because there is a sort of ritual now that must be observed when the Tories do well on diversity: you must not speak ill of a person of colour who has been elected to a position of leadership for the first time, and the significance of that moment, above all else, should be respected.
That ritual now has become a sort of farce. Because many things are staring us in the face while we are asked to perform some perfunctory ceremony of celebration. The ritual now even has its own incantation: “putting politics aside” or “whatever you think of their politics”, you must say, we must recognise that this is a good day for British politics and society in general. I’m not clear how you can “put politics aside” when it’s Badenoch’s actual job, and when her record is so appalling. I mean, it’s Kemi Badenoch. And her job is leader of the opposition.
This is the woman who said that “not all cultures are equally valid”, when deciding on who is to be allowed to enter the UK. Who said that autistic people undeservingly receive “better treatment” and economic “privileges and protections”. Who thinks that maternity pay is “excessive”. That online safety regulation is “legislating for hurt feelings” and that net zero commitments are “unilateral economic disarmament”. And who has dedicated much of her career so far to pugnacious culture warring.
And if you were to just take a glance at what her elevation means to the ethnic minority from which she comes, I am afraid that there is not only little to celebrate, but a lot to worry about. Take Badenoch on colonialism (she doesn’t care about it); on Black communities (she thinks no such thing exists, a neat echo of Thatcher’s “no such thing as society”); and on racism (when Black people are in the wrong job, in her experience, they just think their employer is racist).
But you must park whatever you think of that, and acknowledge that this is a good day because it says something about diminishing barriers to the rise of people of colour today. What that obscures is the specific circumstances of that rise, and of which people in particular. It’s not just anyone who gets to the top in British politics, but those who adhere to a particular story – one in which their experience, success and racial identity allow them to undermine the concerns of other ethnic minorities and attack those minorities for not toeing the line in terms of their “integration” or political values. (Badenoch says that “ancestral hostilities” make some immigrants “hate Israel”.) It seems that successful candidates, because of their identity, can do the wider work of Conservatism when it comes to race in a way that their white counterparts are not able to without annihilating the veneer of respectability that distinguishes the Conservatives from the far right.
And the circumstances are also troubling. Kemi Badenoch, like Rishi Sunak, ran before as party leader and was dismissed out of hand. And like Sunak, she was only considered when the party’s prospects had dwindled. It’s an awkward question and again I am sorry to pose it while we are in the customary grace period of putting politics aside, but does there not seem to be a correlation between electing ethnic minorities as party heads, and a recent deterioration of the party’s performance internally and at the ballot box? The implication is that when the party is not really in serious play, it can afford to experiment with new people who wouldn’t have been quite the right profile in more bountiful times, and see where it goes.
It’s a lot to reckon with, I know, when there is a far simpler moment to land on, a far simpler story of racial success to grasp on to. If you had told me 10 years ago that we would have a brown prime minister and a Black female leader of the Tory party, I would have imagined a far less flat and dispiriting scenario. The Tories’ record on elevating problematic people of colour has accelerated quicker than society’s understanding that people of colour can be problematic too – and that it’s OK to say so. The party’s degrading effect on social cohesion over the past decade is far too clear now for any of us not to realise that this is the way the status quo works. Its very power lies in constantly expanding the profile of people included in the establishment so that they may stabilise it, by diversifying it.
Badenoch has the right to have whatever opinions she wishes, but it is also the right of others to feel excluded by them, and not be scolded for refusing to cheer an appointment that is at best meaningless, and at worst perturbing.
Badenoch’s election is a first that signifies nothing. But it is useful, because it forces us to confront the fact that representation does not happen simply by elevating women or people of colour. True representation requires specific people and specific circumstances that do something other than merely continuing, or indeed entrenching, the way things already are. It’s a curveball for sure. But we can catch it. And catch up.
Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
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