Sometimes, you need to live abroad to appreciate what is special about this country.
Lots of commentators have noted that Kemi Badenoch is the first black woman to run a major British political party, but this is less novel than they suggest. She is, after all, the fourth woman to lead the Conservatives, and the second non-white leader in a row.
More significant – and more representative of modern Britain – is that Kemi is, to all intents and purposes, an immigrant. Yes, she was born here, but she grew up in Nigeria, and sees this country through the appreciative eyes of someone who has chosen it.
She and I have that in common. I arrived in Britain from Peru in the late 1970s, and was astonished to find everyone in such a grump. Whatever its faults, Britain still struck me as a place to which most of the world would gladly move.
‘What should they know of England who only England know?’ wrote Kipling, frustrated at his neighbours’ lack of interest in their country’s achievements.
Living elsewhere knocks that complacency out of you. You become aware of the uniqueness of our national institutions, of the trust they foster, of the fragile nature of our individualist society. You bridle when people who have been lucky enough to grow up here trash our history.
Kemi is the latest example of the Conservative Party’s extraordinary ability to be in front of the curve. There are nearly 300,000 Brits of Nigerian heritage, a number that has grown hugely over the past 20 years.
Labour’s appeal to these voters, and the millions more whom they have taken to calling ‘global majority’ (i.e. non-white), is one of victimhood. Your ancestors were exploited! You live with structural racism! Vote for us!
But many people choose to come to Britain precisely because they admire it. They are proud to be here. They often have family who served in British uniform.
Kemi, though it is not her chief focus, speaks to and for such people.
Leftist journalists made a theatrical fuss when it turned out that, in an online discussion group many years ago, she had pointed out that plenty of ordinary Nigerians benefited from British rule.
Such sentiments cause fainting fits among our public intellectuals, but they are hardly extreme. In 1947, Obafemi Awolowo, one of Nigeria’s founding fathers, wrote that an obstacle to independence was that the ordinary Nigerian ‘is convinced, and has good reason to be, that he can always get better treatment from the white man than he could hope to get from the chiefs’.
Kemi, in short, has a sense of perspective. Leftists see a history of slavery. She sees also the extraordinary and unique campaign to stamp out the slave trade.
Leftists see a hierarchy of oppression. She sees a land of opportunity where anyone can rise.
Leftists see racist coppers. She sees coppers who do their jobs without taking bribes. ‘When people say that the police treat you differently because of the colour of your skin and so on, I’m sure that there will be cases where that has happened,’ she told an interviewer. ‘But I grew up in a place where the police looked exactly like me and they were not nice.’
No wonder she offends the race industry grievance-mongers, who have reacted with predictable rage to her election. One British Nigerian commentator called her ‘white supremacy in blackface’, in a social media post shared by the Labour MP Dawn Butler.
You can feel Labour MPs’ frustration.
Rachel Reeves goes on endlessly about being a role model for little girls.
David Lammy, plainly irked that he is not the first black foreign secretary, boasts of being the first ‘black, working-class man from Tottenham’ to hold the job.
Yet, despite its obsession with identity politics, Labour has only ever been led by white men. The Tories, meanwhile, look for merit without regard for colour or chromosomes. Which is more appealing?
None of this will win Kemi the next election. That depends, first, on re-establishing the Tories’ credibility on immigration, the issue that drove the rise of Reform; and, second, on the party being seen as competent when it comes to the economy – the issue that will bring down Labour.
Those objectives are not easy to meet in Opposition, when voters are dwelling on the failures of the last government. It will take extraordinary energy and commitment.
But the first step is to be on the side of the country you aspire to lead. Jeremy Corbyn lost in large measure because he was seen as anti-British. Sir Keir Starmer, though he has worked to distance himself from his predecessor, does not display patriotism. Hence his appalling decision to hand away the Chagos Islands, and his readiness to enter into talks about compensation for slavery.
Kemi is plainly and viscerally appreciative of this country. Not a bad place to start.
