Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Why the Tories should gamble on Kemi Badenoch

There’s only one candidate for prime minister with the guts to dismantle the self-loathing culture of identity politics that is destroying Britain. She’s uniquely qualified to take on the challenge because she’s a black woman raised in Nigeria who studied for her A-levels while working in McDonald’s. And she may succeed because, in addition to a passion for knocking heads together, she has a startlingly clear understanding of how our politics and culture are poisoning each other in a left-liberal suicide pact.

As soon as I read Kemi Badenoch’s article in this morning’s Times, I thought: this is a risk worth taking. The last gamble didn’t pay off, but then Boris Johnson was always too distracted and self-absorbed to assemble his maverick ideas into a political philosophy. Cameron and May, meanwhile, were almost completely subservient to ‘the Blob’.

The British public are sick of being lectured by halo-polishing elitists obsessed with race, sexuality and claiming expenses.

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