Kemi Badenoch through to next round

[InTheCanteen]

If you have a Conservative MP and want to protect the rights of women and safeguard children please email them TONIGHT and ask them to support Kemi.

Penny Mordaunt still the bookies favourite (and they aren't often wrong) but we need to let everyone know how dangerous it will be for this woman to become PM; I don't believe she has changed her mind for one moment.

If only there was a sub-board on mumsnet with a thread right at the top where black women are expressing their opinion of KB.

Oh wait there is.

(spoiler - she's not popular)

I don't get your point @GCtothemoon What are you trying to say?

Not sure what point that makes? There are a plurality of views among black women?

hardly news is it?

I would add and I’m fine with caring but prefer to be on the top doing it, real change with opportunity doesn’t feel as safe. Hence strong words like scary

Just generally from left this reaction has seen so much busy-ness but lack of ability to face views head on.

It has also seemed to encourage diverse views and loss of one section in society owning the narrative

It really does help when our leaders are from a diverse background- it shifts the landscape

I fear that there are two irreconcilable strands to conservatism. On the one hand supporting family and community structures, even traditions and distinct local culture but on the other neoliberal economics and the ideology of the free market.

I agree PomegranateOfPersephone. I think it's exacerbated due to the forced and uneasy (but necessary) partnership arising from the nature of the two party electoral system. There are similar dynamics within the Labour Party with old school economically leftwing but socially conservative strands feeling stymied by the hyper-individualistic, uber liberal, identity focused faction that overlooks economic class.

Ideally there would be at least four dominant political parties to cater for the different outlooks, with a form of proportional representation to ensure those viewpoints are adequately represented.

There's actually quite a bit in common between the neoliberal strands on the right and the left. All about maximising individual freedoms (whether profits or identities) with little thought for how it might affect society more broadly and in the longer term.

I thought that was an interesting article relevant to the thread: unherd.com/2022/07/kemi-badenoch-has-saved-the-tories/

DoElephantsHaveWrinkles · Today 09:36
“I'm curious as to why.

We all know why.

She's a black woman that isn't following the course that people on the left feel that she should, therefore she's a traitor, far right, Britain First sympathiser, etc.

If a white man said the same things, I'm sure he would be criticised, but this is much more personal in my opinion.
It's just racism from a different angle, although that will be loudly denied, of course. I don't think a lot of them even realise what they're doing, to be honest (I bet a lot of them call themselves anti-racist though).

I like her because of her sharp, quick witted thinking, that seems to be able to cut through obfuscation; and was particularly impressed by an exchange with Caroline Noakes.

I understand what you mean - what if say Laurence Fox had said the same? I don’t think he or other white men would have been able to pick his way through the trap to expose the issue clearly (that it wasn’t about ‘trans’ but about biology) in the same way.

That is an abstract capacity though on her part. In the end it would matter too to what end she would use her evident intelligence.

By leftist, do you mean left of the current candidates to be leader of the Tory party, in which case I am as have been most members of the Tory party for the past 100 yearss.
Or do you mean left of centre?

Are you saying that Kemi has similar views to Lawrence Fox?

Which argument would you like me in particular to defend?

GCAcademic · Today 10:03
I’d say they are happy to be UKIP. The whole point (for the Tories) of the EU referendum and the subsequent Brexit legislation was to kill them off and recover their electoral prospects, and they succeeded in that. There is no party for moderates now. The moderate Tories were mainly kicked out in 2019.

I do agree overall.

Even Starmer backs Brexit now.

There is no remainer position left on either side. If that’s what a moderate is looking for they won’t find it anywhere.

Even Starmer backs Brexit now

That’s a bit of an overstatement. He accepts that the die is cast and we have to make the best of a bad job.

Are you saying that Kemi has similar views to Lawrence Fox?

On the question of whether women can have a penis, the majority of the population agree with Lawrence Fox.

He’s not going against it.

If a voter is looking for that they won’t find it anywhere, Brexit is now bi partisan and it’s not possible to vote it out.

So I don’t really see the position of the Cons as to the right on that issue - there’s no distinction now.

Cons were divided on it and Labour under Corbyn not clear.

I knew what I wanted and voted accordingly but it has now passed.

Is that the only topic on which Kemi and Lawrence agree?

I expect they agree and disagree on all manner on things, as is perfectly normal for human beings to do. In any case, I find it fairer to judge people on their own expressed views, rather than resorting to guilt by association.

I do get some of the cognitive dissonance referred to upthread because it reminds me of how I felt in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher was elected. This was so not how how I'd imagined Britain's first woman Prime Minister 😮I remember Jill Tweedie in the Guardian, wondering whether to vote for Thatcher because the mere fact of having a female PM would shift so much ground. I was horrified - as were most Guardian readers who responded.

And yet I was always aware that Thatcher attracted a level of vitriol and dislike that couldn't be explained simply by her policies, unpopular as they were. I have very uncomfortable memories of placards at demonstrations: the delightful 'Ditch the Bitch' and 'Britain's first woman Prime Minister - and the last'.

I spent 40 years looking the other way until the current shit show made me face up to the deep vein of misogyny that still runs on the left.

So I'm not unsympathetic.

(I also miss Jill Tweedie's writing and wish I'd kept her articles, especially the one about the Yorkshire Ripper. But that's for another thread.)

I'd like you to defend all the arguments you make. Don't think it's too much to expect.

I agree about Thatcher - I remember hating her as a teenager and trying desperately to explain why she wasn't really a woman prime minister, that she was just a mouthpiece for the men, etc.

Thankfully I grew up and realised I wasn't making any sense.

But yes, I think this is very similar to where the hatred for Kemi comes from. She "aint black" or she's a traitor or a mouthpiece for the far right, or she's a Britain First supporter etc etc. It's just racism, as it was just misogyny when it was directed tonwards Thatcher.

It's only in recent years that I've come to acknowledge just how much unpleasantness Thatcher had to put up with. And also what a fish out of water she was in her own party, largely because of class - admittedly one of my sources there is 'The Crown' 😀Even so, I can't believe how I never noticed it at the time.

I've been following this thread (and the others about KB) with interest and am troubled by some of the language used to describe her.

I've read that she's evil, motivated by hate, a nasty piece of work etc, all of which strikes me as lacking any appreciation of different perspectives or convictions. Why, when someone holds a different view, are they automatically vilified and condemned?

I'm left wing. I have never voted Conservative and it's highly unlikely that I ever will. But I am genuinely interested in KB, despite her political convictions being so at odds with my own. I admire her forthrightness, her intelligence and her courage to speak her mind and be her own person. She also comes across - to me at least - as more human than all the others in the running for leader.

I don't understand the vitriol that she seems to evoke given that (as others have pointed out) her position is not unlike most of the other candidates.

I for one would have much preferred her to be elected leader than Truss, Mourdant, Sunak et al.

It was only recently that a female MP on the left said Thatcher wasn’t a real woman

I can’t recall who, but how outdated is that

I can't remember who said that but yeah, that was the only way we could explain her: 'a woman but not a sister' etc.

I still prefer Barbara Castle mind you 😀

This isn't really any different to Labours issues though. And it's the same among moderate left parties in most countries. They've all adopted a version of the same liberal economic approach and also what is frankly often a damaging liberal hands off social approach. totally unlike any leftist government. You can see it in the support for international trade deals and movement of labour, it's a big part of why they've lost their voter base.

To a large degree the political choice for years has been liberalism v1 and v2.