Kemi Badenoch

[CassieMaddox]

Looking unlikely to win the Conservative leadership now and has gone very quiet about women's rights/the EA during her campaign.

Current favourite is Cleverly.

I know she had a lot of support on here so just wondering what people thought had gone wrong for her?

Funnily enough, the BBC’s initial headline is now nowhere to be found.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/did-kemi-badenoch-really-call-maternity-pay-excessive/

I heard the interview. I heard Kemi Badenoch. So did anyone else who cared to listen to it.

My opinion on what she said is not influenced by some BBC article, or something you think the BBC said. My opinion on her subsequent lies have nothing to do with the BBC. Badenoch is a bare faced liar, claiming victimisation instead of simply admitting she was wrong.

That's who she is.🤷‍♀️

Care to link an interview where she said maternity pay was excessive? I bet you can’t

We saw very clearly 2010-2024 that core conservative principles do not involve anything making life better for the average person and everything making life richer for Tory chums.

Hence Badenoch claiming that current maternity leave and pay is "excessive regulation" on business. Fuck the WC and MC women who need it, it's an excessive regulation on business.

In an interview with Times Radio, she was asked if she thought maternity pay was at the right level. She said:“Maternity pay varies, depending on who you work for. But statutory maternity pay is a function of tax, tax comes from people who are working. We’re taking from one group of people and giving to another. This, in my view, is excessive.

“Businesses are closing, businesses are not starting in the UK, because they say that the burden of regulation is too high.”

Asked again if she thought maternity pay was excessive, Badenoch replied: “I think it’s gone too far the other way, in terms of general business regulation. We need to allow businesses, especially small businesses, to make more of those decisions.

“The exact amount of maternity pay, in my view, is neither here nor there. We need to make sure that we are creating an environment where people can work and people can have more freedom to make their own decisions.”

I think if anyone wants a sense of the kind of principles conservatives have traditionally espoused they should have a look at Edmund Burke. ANd Roger Scrunton is one of the best modern examples IMO.

It tends to see community-social-family ties as more important and foundational than national or state social structures. Some people tend to see conservatives as individualist, but that's more toward the libertarian type, traditionally it's much more localist or communitarian.

It tends then to want to see local power structures and social nets having primacy of national ones.

It also tends to see social hierarchies as inevitable, and so seeks to manage them rather than abolish them.

Economically, it's notable that it isn't into free-market fundamentalism, and I think it's very interesting that at least internationally, we've been seeing some return to questions about that among some conservatives - (and weirdly it's the left who get their knickers in a twist about protectionism.) Traditional conservative principles are fundamentally pragmatic about economics, neither neo-liberal nor into strong state controls at an ideological level.

Mysense is KB is down with this apart from the economic stuff. But I am not sure anyone now has a good sense of how to deal with economic issues, and I think some of her views come very much out of observing social problems that emerge out of attempted social engineering by the state. THat tends to lead to reactionary response though rather than a reexamination of fundamentals.

She didn't say there should be no maternity pay though. I think that assumption is largely due to the media spinning what she said in the way they want.

I don't think it's at all clear what kind of policy she would like or thinks would work, but she did very clearly say that women should get maternity pay and dismissed the idea she was saying otherwise.

This is not the win you seem to think it is, @LongtailedTitmouse .😂

Either Badenoch meant that the amount of maternity pay is excessive.

Or she meant that having regulation that employers/govt must pay maternity pay is excessive, and they should be free to choose – including choosing not to pay maternity pay at all.

NB I say "employers/govt" because what she said was so muddled it wasn't clear. I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who simply muddles their words and clearly has a coherent idea behind it, but given Badenoch's successive attempts to dig herself out over the day – though actually digging herself deeper in – that's not what happened here.

If I divine it correctly from her own words, her position over the day was:

– Companies being mandated to give women maternity pay is government interference, which is bad.

– Government paying maternity pay is taking from taxpayers to give to women, which is bad. [We'll skip over the awkward women-ARE-taxpayers bit for now.]

– Maternity pay is great and women should definitely receive it.

– Oh, and make me leader, I'll be grand. [Edited to add she didn't verbatim say this bit, before anyone gets het up and accuses me of making things up.😂 The interview was in the context of the leadership contest, so this part is taken as read.]

Maternity pay has gone too far, suggests Kemi Badenoch
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c781m9v4255o

BTW thanks for linking the original interview, @LongtailedTitmouse , I hadn't heard it before, and I do like to get context. I can now in all good conscience think Badenoch and some of her supporters have been absolute planks over this.

I mean, just stop digging. While I can still see the top of your head!

They didn't really get more voters though, compared to the previous election. Rather, many people who had voted for the Tories before voted Reform, or something else.

I think what she was getting at is that if businesses are struggling to success due to regulations around things like maternity pay, it's not a workable system. If businesses fail they aren't providing jobs or benefits to anyone.

And similarly with taxation, the money comes ultimately from taxpayers and their productivity so if there isn't enough for all the things the government needs or want stop do, then taxation needs to increase somehow. Which she isn't keen on.

That suggests that the direction of her thinking on maternity benefits specifically would be on some other kind of model, which do exist in some places.

She didn't say there should be no maternity pay though. I think that assumption is largely due to the media spinning what she said in the way they want.

No one has assumed Badenoch said there should be no maternity leave, no one spun it that way, no one thinks she said it. People heard what she said. That is the problem she has, people actually heard her.

Her response to that problem? Lies, deflection and allegations. She is reactive and defensive. The opposite of a politician.

😂😂😂

Are you aiming for Australia?

Through the core?

I didn't say anything about maternity leave, is that a typo.

I am not sure why you think you are the only one who saw what she said, do you actually believe that? Or do you just think that only you can understand what she really meant - even though she specifically said she did not mean that?

Your assumption seems to be that because she doesn't like the way that businesses are regulated on this, she thinks there should be no provision for women. That's a huge leap. Do you believe there is only one way to manage maternity benefits?

What are you talking about?

Again - do you think there can only be one way for a country to administer maternity benefits to women?

You may not think that excessive regulation is a problem for business now . But can you imagine, for a moment, that it was the case - let's say small businesses were struggling with the demands of maternity regulation (among other things), and it was affecting their ability to be productive. Therefore giving a boost to the attempts of large corporate employers to squeeze out small business. It's not an impossible scenario - big corporations love regulation as a way to squeeze small business.

If that were the case, would it seem reasonable to look at other models for maternity provision?

KB clearly thinks business is struggling from excessive regulation - and quite a lot of small business owners would agree with her. That's why she says she doesn't think the current set up is working.

Asking what she might like to see instead is logical, accusing her of wanting something she specifically said she didn't want, not so much.

Yes, it is a typo. Apologies @TempestTost.
No one has assumed Badenoch said there should be no maternity pay, no one spun it that way, no one thinks she said it. People heard what she said. That is the problem she has, people actually heard her.Her response to that problem? Lies, deflection and allegations. She is reactive and defensive. The opposite of a politician.

I don't think that I am the only person who heard what she said. That would he mad. It was broadcast. Loads of people heard it at the time.

An interesting post, thanks!

Yes, the main problem, for me, with Kemi is that she is too ideological - neo liberal when it comes to the economy. When you become too ideological there is tendency to forget about the people/the community you are trying to serve.

I listened to it too...and it was clear that she was trying to finish her first point, whilst the interviewer simultaneously injected maternity pay into the equation.

She had been trying to explain how maternity pay was a function of taxation. Her wider point was that she thought businesses were subject to too much regulation. Not that she thought maternity pay was too much.

Kemi is quite ideological when it comes to economics, and being an engineer she tends to have an eye for systems and how they work. She was attempting to explain how 'the system' funds things.

In Liverpool the Labour share of the vote was down - with Reform and the Greens picking up some of that share. Tories tend hardly to poll at at all in Liverpool - with maximum a few thousand votes in each constituency - at very most.

Nobody, except for you maybe, is trying to 'win' here. People have different persepctives and views on matters, and are trying to explain them.

What model would it be? It’s either compulsory for employers to provide maternity leave, or it’s voluntary.

And if it’s voluntary, how many businesses will offer it? My guess would be only at very high paying professional roles. Where does that leave ordinary women’s ability to hold down a job through the years of child bearing? Effectively excluding many women from work or making their employment precarious is absolutely SHIT for the economy. The country can’t afford to waste women’s labour and women’s talent and potential. Maternity leave is the price we pay to enable this greater good for our country’s GDP as a whole.

Alternative models could be insurance based - such as those that people currently take out/pay into for pensions or for health.

But that is an additional cost that each woman has to pay that a man doesn’t need to. It would be a direct structural disadvantage to women in employment. We do need someone to have babies.

Yes, but Badenoch's point and persepective is quite ideological, as well as systemic, in that she believes people need to take more responsibility for their own well being - and that forcing small businesses to have to pay high rates of benefit is too restrictive and punitive.

If you look at it this way - Labour's newly announced policy that people must have every benefit from day one of their employment: sickness, maternity, and so on..it is easy to see how this could cause far too much pressure on many small businesses. Then we could be back to the days of employers being reluctant to employ women of childbearing age, let alone older people with established medical conditions or histories of depression and so on.

Public sector jobs tend to have high rates of absenteeism and sickness.....but private businesses could not cope with that in the same way.