Amina Taylor | Will Kemi be crowned Tory leader?

Take a bow, Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch. Barring a polling catastrophe or a desperate misreading of the views of the current Conservative Party faithful, the former Business and Equalities Secretary is on the cusp of creating history as the first black woman to lead not just the Conservative Party in the UK, but ANY major political party in British history.

Badenoch would succeed Rishi Sunak (himself the first South Asian to lead the party) as leader of HM Opposition and thus set as a PM-In-Waiting.

Her historic journey has been shaped by a very curious desire to do away with all semblances of the outer trappings that would have branded her ‘a unifying moderate’. From the deliberate Anglicisation of her Nigerian moniker to a distinctly ‘anti-woke’ political agenda, Badenoch wants her supporters to know she might be the child of immigrants and be ‘melanin-rich’ but don’t be thinking she’s a bleeding-heart Liberal here to support the weak and down-trodden. Nope. In fact, she’s keen to go that extra mile in distancing herself from any policy that could be deemed ‘for the many, not the few’.

Her race to the top of the Tory political tree has been defined by her drift to very right of the party. Stomping on the corpse of common sense and national unity just a small price to pay as the Conservatives wring their hands and decide the best way to face off against the politics of Nigel Farage and his ilk is to try and beat them at their own right-wing game and that Kemi Badenoch is just the woman for the job.

As a black woman, part of me desperately wants to cheer for Kemi’s political ascent. I’ve always embraced the fact that black women are not a monolith, and your skin colour should not define your beliefs. As an alumnus of the same university she attended for her undergrad, I should be bursting with pride thinking, ‘there goes my fellow Sussex Bee making waves in the world’. Instead, I am wondering where the rise of this tinpot Maggie Thatcher might take British politics.

ABRASIVE STYLE

It may be a few years out, but the spectre of Badenoch meeting Trump in the Rose Garden of the White House haunts me. The forward-thinking political analyst Richard Sudan predicted this in frequent conversations we shared as we mused the transatlantic political landscape, and I thought, ‘Surely the public can’t be subjected to this grim future’. It seems like I failed to see the turning tide. There may still be time to steady the ship, prevent it crashing into the rocks of decency, but the clock is ticking.

Some of Badenoch’s recent musings have me more concerned than ever. The honourable lady said statutory maternity pay negatively impacted businesses and was “excessive”. Granted, she stepped back from this position after a massive outcry but has yet to publicly distance herself from the claim that tens of thousands of civil servants were so bad at their jobs that they should be in jail.

I also have not come across any public missives where there is any back-pedalling on a pamphlet endorsed by her that said the number of claims for mental health problems in Britain has ‘outpaced any conceivable clinical explanation’. This despite the NHS having a waiting list in excess of two million individuals desperate for treatment in a creaking, wholly underfunded system. Don’t forget Badenoch’s swipe at those with autism, who were accused of using their status to get ‘better treatment or equipment at school’. Having someone so publicly lacking compassion with their hands on the levers of power is a sobering thought.

Party grandees, seemingly, have welcomed her no-nonsense style and ability to square off against detractors, but despite the Maggie-Lite makeover, there is an abrasive style that may be a difficult sell to a wider voting public. Yet, Tory party voters have conceded that Badenoch has ‘charisma’ and is a ‘character’ that could cut through the noise and have real impact in opposition.

GRAND POLITICAL GAMBLE

Perhaps the path to Badenoch’s rise has been made easier by the quality of her opposition. The party is now devoid of Big Beasts. There is no political universe where Badenoch would have stood a chance against a Lord Cameron or even a depleted Boris Johnson. Other potential contenders saw the direction of travel and decided to either jump before they were pushed or braved the polls and were given their marching orders by the electorate. In fact, after receiving their worst political drubbing since the 1830s, the sheer number of Conservative parliamentarians can be measured in the tens, not hundreds.

When the only other vaguely recognisable opponent in the leadership race ‘One Nation’ candidate, former Foreign and Home Secretary, James Cleverly, was knocked out in the previous round, Badenoch supporters could almost smell victory.

It also helps that Badenoch’s final opponent in the two-horse race ahead of a final vote by Conservative members (winner announced November 2) is the rather hapless Robert Jenrick. The former immigration minister is determined to stick to a single issue and ride it into political obscurity even if that issue is the anti-immigration ticket, once thought to be a sure-fire hit.

You get the sense that Badenoch may well be the Conservative’s response to Labour … for now, a grand political gamble that they are forced to take as the prospect of years in political wilderness looms large. Badenoch’s real legacy will be the state in which she leaves the Tory Party - and wider politics - when she eventually steps away.

Amina Taylor is a journalist and broadcaster. She is the former editor of Pride magazine and works as producer, presenter, and correspondent with Press TV in London.