Only Black Conservative Leadership Candidate Accused of ‘Enabling White Supremacy’

Official portrait of Conservative MP Kemi Badenoch, who represents the constituency of Saf
UK Parliament
Kurt Zindulka

Kemi Badenoch, former equalities minister and candidate in the Conservative Party leadership race to replace Boris Johnson, has been accused of “enabling white supremacy” despite being the only black candidate to have joined the race to date.

Kemi Badenoch, the Tory MP for Saffron Walden, entered the contest to succeed Boris Johnson on Friday evening. Laying out her motivations to run, the Nigerian-heritage candidate stressed the importance of standing up to the woke mob and the identity politics that has defined much of the political conversation in Britain since at least 2020.

“Our country is falsely criticised as oppressive to minorities and immoral, because it enforces its own borders. We cannot maintain a cohesive nation-state with the zero-sum identity politics we see today,” Ms Badenoch wrote in The Times.

“Exemplified by coercive control, the imposition of views, the shutting down of debate, the end of due process, identity politics is not about tolerance or individual rights but the very opposite of our crucial and enduring British values,” she continued.

Badenoch has become a central figure of ire for the far left in Britain, despite her relatively junior role in the government, over her strident opposition to the implementation of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other leftist ideologies on race into the education system in the United Kingdom.

Reminiscent of the attacks on former California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder, in response to Badenoch joining the leadership contest on Friday evening This is Why I Resist author and leftist political commentator Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu said that Badenoch’s “power-grabbing ambition is rooted in discrediting [and] delegitimising antiracism efforts, denying systemic racism, whitewashing [the] British Empire [and] enabling White supremacy against Black people.”

“She can crawl back into her mother,” Dr Shola added.

The tirades continued on Saturday morning when Mos-Shogbamimu wrote: “Kemi Badenoch is a GIFT for racists & White supremacy – uses her Black identity to delegitimise the systemic oppression she claims UK is falsely accused of & now uses Black minority identity to run for Prime Minister. A Black Racial-Gatekeeping Executioner of Tory racist policies.”

Mrs Badenoch is no stranger to such attacks from the left, with Labour MP Dawn Butler appearing to call her and others “racial gatekeepers” in the House of Commons following the release of a government race report last year.

The report, led by British-born Jamaican-heritage educator Dr Tony Sewell, found that there was no institutional racism in Britain — quite the contrary, it claimed that the United Kingdom is a “beacon to the rest of Europe and the world” in terms of race relations.

The report drew international condemnation, including from the United Nations, as well as from radicals in Britain. Breitbart London revealed that Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson had posted a picture of Sewell on social media with the message that “house negroes” are “in need of hanging”.

Condemning such attacks, Badenoch told Parliament: “It is wrong to accuse those who argue for a different approach as being ‘racism deniers’ or ‘race traitors’. It is even more irresponsible – dangerously so – to call ethnic minority people racial slurs like ‘Uncle Toms’, ‘Coconuts’, ‘House slaves or House Negroes’ for daring to think differently.

“Such deplorable tactics are designed to intimidate ethnic minority people from their right to express legitimate views.”

Badenoch rose to international attention in 2020 in the wake of the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in Britain following the death of George Floyd in America, which prompted many British educational institutions to implement leftist ideologies such as Critical Race Theory.

“I want to be absolutely clear that the Government stand unequivocally against Critical Race Theory. Some schools have decided to openly support the anti-capitalist Black Lives Matter group, often fully aware that they have a statutory duty to be politically impartial,” Badenoch said in a viral speech.

“Of course black lives matter, but we know that the Black Lives Matter movement is political. I know that because, at the height of the protests, I have been told of white Black Lives Matter protesters calling a black armed police officer guarding Downing Street — I apologise for saying this word — ‘a pet nigger’. That is why we do not endorse that movement on this side of the House,” she added.

The speech won her widespread acclaim in Britain and the United States among conservatives, with readers of the ConservativeHome website voting it the speech of the year in 2020.

In her leadership pitch, Badenoch said that she would draw on the principles of one of her heroes, American economist Thomas Sowell, whom she quoted as saying: “If you want to help people, tell them the truth; if you want to help yourself, tell them what they want to hear”.

As opposed to the big-spending, high-tax regime of Boris Johnson and leadership rival Rishi Sunak, Badenoch said that she would govern with “tight spending discipline” and a focus on improving economic growth and productivity, alongside lower taxes.

“We need to reinvigorate the case for free speech, free markets and the institutions that defend a free people because our values and our ideas are too precious not to fight for with all our heart,” she wrote.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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