Kemi Badenoch -new Conservative leader given a dirty job

Nov 11, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

---

…Hard Truths 

By Ghk Lall 

Kaieteur News- From former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to Kemi Badenoch, a potential prime minister in waiting.  From a brown man who did a pale imitation of the Brown Bomber at his best (and bombed out) to a black woman who gets her chance to prove what it is to be young, gifted, and black.  And now the new darling of the Conservative party of Great Britain.

It is so stunning, as to be worth repeating -Ms. Kemi Badenoch is the leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party.  What is the world coming to these days?  The baton has passed from India to Nigeria in jolly olde England.  Indeed, the Old World is changing.  It is my fervent hope that the world is not coming to an end.  The New World certainly looks as though it is in trouble, with a New York demagogue hanging over America’s head and with all manner of machinations ready to get into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue by any means possible.

Truth be told, at best, England qualifies as no more than an also ran in the world of big developments and bigger powers.  Look Eastward, folks.  But it is still big enough to have its say and hold some occasional sway.  Ms. Badenoch’s first duty has to be to unite her troops, pull a fractious party by the scruff of its neck back to some semblance of normalcy, to some point of feared contention.  The Conservative party cannot be said to be anywhere near such a state today, hasn’t been in recent times.  Her time is sure to be difficult, but it is doable.  Ms. Badenoch has the backing of those who matter in her party, and won by a decent margin in an unlikely runoff with another right winger.  Other places in Europe have tilted towards more right wing politics and right wing leadership.  It’s the temper of the times, and it is raw.  My contemplation on Ms. Badenoch’s victory is how does a woman with Nigerian roots walk the hotwire and minefield of immigration.  If there is a code word, an official sounding euphemism, for what causes the English, the Continental Europeans, and my own fellow Americans so much to worry about, it is immigration.

In my own words, and in my own sometime unsparing interpretations of the times and circumstances, immigration means this and much more: there are too many brown and black and bronze people in the country, in the neighbourhood, and in the thoroughfares of domestic life.  Stop them from coming or, better yet, send them back to from where they came.  A brown skinned man with heritage to match was handed that nasty job and he didn’t do too well.  Now a black woman has been given that job to try her hand (not national yet) at cleaning up the mess, and righting the ship that once ruled the high seas.  To be brutally frank, even at the risk of being accused of many things, there is that old truism that I dare to repeat publicly.  When there is a dirty job to do, get a dark man to do it.  In this instance in the UK’s Conservative Party, a brown man was first tried, and now a black woman has her opportunity at sorting out the Elysian stables.  Should Ms. Badenoch take too much of an aggressive stance (what are her choices but to deliver on the party people’s wishes?), much unwanted stuff is going to stick to her.  Should she dissemble and delay, the plight that befell Rishi Sunak waits uninvitingly.

To make this personal, as a migrant, I recognize sensible policies, the law and limits and process.  But immigration in the UK and US has been allowed to get so out of hand because of cowardice and inaction, it is now an almost insurmountable issue, with the will still lacking.  Whatever the course that the new Conservative leader charts, I do not foresee it as being any kind of middle ground.  She is already the golden child of the right wingers in her party, but there is always the national picture, i.e., getting back into 10 Downing Street.  Relative to climate change, there is fear, but the will to challenge Big Oil is just not there, and if anything, the Conservative Party is more about business than any of its competition.  It is another tightrope, but the most successful pols have made a living by being a combination of amateur acrobat and gymnast not so smooth as to win national selection or howls of approval.  But still they did, by some mystery.

I think that Ms. Kemi Badenoch has a layup in her hands with woke culture, cancel culture, and politically correct culture.  I am against all three, with the greatest disregard for the first two.  Most of the olde British stock (maybe the British Empire, too) have also had it up their necks with those three.  Time for them to be tossed out on their heads, though the going will be anything but easy.  To a coloured sister who has risen to the top I doff my top hat, give a ceremonial wave of my cane, and the slightest of curtsies: best wishes.  Now go out and show the world how to navigate that trap set and shine.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

(new Conservative leader)

---

• brown man, Kemi Badenoch, potential prime, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak

---