On Tuesday, parliament voted for the first time on legislation to begin the phasing out of smoking (not just cigarettes, but cigars, shisha, you name it), and to create a two-tier legal system where some adults will be able to buy these products, and some won’t. Although the ban seems popular with the public, it has become a lightning rod for Tory MPs, who see it as a shibboleth for how conservative they and their colleagues are. Westminster-watchers are, inevitably, seeing it through the lens of a future leadership contest.
The vote was free – that is, not one where members of Parliament were whipped to vote with the government. Ministers could follow their conscience. The highest profile ‘no’ was Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch. She was the only member of cabinet to vote against the smoking ban, and one of only a few ministers to.
Badenoch is, aside from the smoking vote, bound by collective ministerial responsibility, and yet has managed to inveigh on everything from a High Court order backing the Michaela free school, to the Cass review that confirms the dangers of transitioning children. These issues are often labelled as ‘culture war’ topics, but they’re important too. If it wasn’t for the ‘culture warriors’, the Cass review may never have happened, and thousands more vulnerable children may have been subjected to life altering chemical or surgical interventions.
Where Badenoch is remarkable is that she manages to be on the right side of all of these issues, in a way that avoids criticism and helps communicate them in a sensible and moderate way. The same cannot be said for many other communicators on the right, who do use these issues more for attention than action. Look at Lee Anderson…
Badenoch has talked before about her appreciation of American conservative philosopher Thomas Sowell. She’s quoted him: ‘If you want to help people, tell them the truth; if you want to help yourself, tell them what they want to hear’. I have been thinking how the Trade Secretary manages to tackle culture war issues when others are blown up by them. I think there’s an intellectual consistency to the way she approaches politics and policy that too many other politicians no longer care about. (It would, of course, be silly to discount the calculations of leadership manoeuvring in this – after all, Badenoch did run for the position in summer 2022.)
The great hope for the Conservatives is that Badenoch and other contenders have not only a clear ideological framework, but an ability to use it to create policies that will appeal to the electorate and work tackle cancel culture and the authoritarian instinct to ban things. Being able to deal with the economy isn’t enough.
Badenoch’s supporters believe that she understands the scale of the challenge that faces Britain. I’m projecting from my own time inside government, but to me those challenges are the need to reform the whole civil service/quango/regulator/charity/judicial review industrial complex that has stymied successive Conservative leaderships. Being brave enough to tackle these structural forces is an even more daunting challenge than acting on big cultural issues of the day. It is encouraging that there are still ministers like Badenoch who will refuse to go gently.
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