{"version":1,"tree":{"n":"html","c":[{"n":"head","x":"\n ","l":"\n ","c":[{"n":"title","x":"Desconocido","l":"\n \n "},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../stylesheet.css"]]},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../page_styles.css"]]}]},{"n":"body","a":[["class","calibre"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"| ","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"Siguiente","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["rel","articlenextlink"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_7/index_u15.html\", \"frag\": \"\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_6/index_u13.html\", \"frag\": \"article_6\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_6\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Anterior","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["rel","articleprevlink"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_6/article_5/index_u27.html\", \"frag\": \"\"}"]]},{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"Bagehot","a":[["class","calibre8"]]},{"n":"h1","x":"Kemi Badenoch is simply too interesting for Downing Street","a":[["class","calibre9"]]},{"n":"div","x":"The Tory leader is fascinating but irrelevant ","a":[["class","calibre19"]]},{"n":"p","x":"may. 08, 2025 01:49 ","a":[["class","calibre10"]]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"img","a":[["src","images/img1_u67.jpg"],["title","Kemi Badeoch doing a selfie on top of the Parliament."],["class","calibre3"],["data-calibre-src","feed_6/article_6/images/img1_u67.jpg"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre11"]]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"A","a":[["data-caps","initial"],["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"span","x":"MONG THE","l":" identikit ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"CV","l":"s of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"MP","l":"s, Kemi Badenoch’s stands out. She grew up under military rule in Nigeria, and at 16 left alone for England. Such a childhood left her with unusually interesting insights. Some are profound. Liberal societies are fragile, she says; you too would hate social-media pile-ons if you’d seen a mob lynch a person in the street. In London the doctor’s daughter took a job at McDonald’s; every migrant knows, she says, that social mobility goes down as well as up. And some of her observations, to British ears, are just odd: she has “nothing in common” with northern Nigerians, who “were our ethnic enemies”. Bracingly right-wing and rarely dull, Ms Badenoch captivated the Conservative membership, who elected her their leader last November.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Fascination has turned to horror. Local elections on May 1st brought heavy losses for the Labour Party but catastrophe for the Tories. The party lost all 16 councils it was defending, caught in a pincer of Reform ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"UK","l":" in poorer regions and the Liberal Democrats in wealthier ones. A party that had faced a struggle to regain office now faces a struggle to survive. Ms Badenoch is part of the problem. She is, if anything, simply too interesting for government.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"For a public tired of Westminster, her idiosyncrasies might have been a tonic. Viewers hate a television format which pits obtuse interviewers against robotic politicians. Ms Badenoch shares their contempt. “It is a fictional series. It is not a documentary,” she deadpanned when interrogated on a breakfast show as to why she had not watched “Adolescence”","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":", ","l":"an anxiety-stirring Netflix drama about knife crime. Downing Street still obsesses about daily newspapers with dwindling circulations; Ms Badenoch prefers to wax lyrical for hours on podcasts with global audiences, such as Jordan Peterson’s show and “Triggernometry” (whose premise of goading liberals is in the name). For a British politician it is an unconventional approach. It is also the future.","a":[["class","calibre18"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"And Ms Badenoch is a dream of a guest. On the topics in which she is interested, she is unusually interesting. She recites her favourite thinkers: Daron Acemoglu, Roger Scruton and Thomas Sowell. She was unfashionably early to the transgender debate, and unfashionably hostile to Black Lives Matter. (If you think British police are unfair, she says, meet Nigerian ones.) Her habits are unorthodox: “Kemi arrived late, sat down noisily, asked a none-too-bright question and left early,” recalled Peter Mandelson, Britain’s ambassador to America, of one dinner party. A graduate of the ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"Spectator","l":", a magazine that has produced a generation of Tories better at describing the country’s problems than fixing them, she would make a fine columnist.","a":[["class","calibre18"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Unfortunately, that is not the job she was hired to do. “She’s simply not very interested in the electorate,” shrugs one Tory. “She skims across her briefings,” says another. To would-be intellectuals, the stuff that wins elections can seem pedestrian: pay, ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"GP","l":" waiting lists and anti-social behaviour. Her rhetoric has been more interesting than the substance of her policy: in the leadership contest she spoke of redrawing the British state and economy on a scale “not attempted since the days of Keith Joseph”. A second Thatcher revolution would be fascinating indeed, but so far she has had little to say on productivity and public services other than when they fortuitously intersect with the culture wars. Perhaps that is no surprise, since in the leadership campaign she hinted at a boredom with policy wonks. “‘Oooh, let’s talk about ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"AI","l":", and let’s talk about ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"NHS","l":" reform,’” she sighed. “I want to talk about freedom.” For voters, it is possible to be interesting but irrelevant.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"The previous time the Tories were kicked out of office, they adopted a mantra: “Concede and move on.” Yet Ms Badenoch has an intriguing appetite to refight the last election. A more ruthless new leader might use their first interview to apologise for Partygate, a pandemic-era scandal. Instead, Ms Badenoch offered a curious defence: lockdown laws introduced by Boris Johnson “ended up creating a trap for Boris Johnson”. It was an imaginative argument; as a day-one pitch to lost voters, it was crackers.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Ms Badenoch enjoys politics more in theory than practice. She may riff on conference panels about the battle for the soul of conservatism, but she was oddly absent from the very real battle for conservatism unfolding to devastating effect in the humdrum towns of Lincolnshire and Shropshire. A hungrier Tory leader would tear into Nigel Farage’s prospectus of protectionism and fiscal populism as anathema to traditional Conservatives. Yet asked to name a point of difference with Reform on ideology or policy, Ms Badenoch would say only that the Tories had a plan. A woman described by colleagues as happy to cross the road to start a fight is oddly reluctant to have one with Mr Farage.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"h4","x":"Scrolling while Rome burns","a":[["class","calibre15"]]},{"n":"p","x":"British politics has big prizes for those clever enough to be dull. Even the loquacious Mr Johnson could stick to a three-word script at an election. Or take Sir Keir Starmer, a deeply intelligent man who took over a Labour Party regarded as too eccentric for power and promptly underwent a form of voluntary lobotomy. The sparkling thoughts on the Geneva Convention that once enlivened Kentish Town dinner parties were parked for four monotone years of touring supermarkets, tutting at the price of butter and saying things like: “Our nation’s defence must always come first.” Try if you can to recall a single Starmer ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"bon mot","l":" from that era; Sir Keir bit his tongue and reaped the rewards.","a":[["class","calibre18"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Yet Ms Badenoch says there is nothing to learn in Sir Keir’s rise to Downing Street. More fascinating still, she has hinted that she isn’t sure if she wants to be prime minister. Perhaps Kemi Badenoch is more interested in being Kemi Badenoch. Her colleagues have started the clock on her leadership, for the electorate is not much interested in her. ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"■"}]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our ","a":[["class","calibre18"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"Opinion newsletter","l":", which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and reader correspondence.","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/newsletters/opinion"]]}]}]}]},{"n":"div","x":"\n","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]},{"n":"p","x":"This article was downloaded by ","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre16"]],"c":[{"n":"strong","x":"calibre","l":" from ","a":[["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"a","x":"https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/06/kemi-badenoch-is-simply-too-interesting-for-downing-street","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/06/kemi-badenoch-is-simply-too-interesting-for-downing-street"],["rel","calibre-downloaded-from"]]}]},{"n":"br","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"br","l":" | ","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_6/index_u13.html\", \"frag\": \"article_6\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_6\"}"]]}]}]}]},"ns_map":["http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"]}