Kemi Badenoch's Rightwing Programme Demands Scrutiny Despite Her Rising Popularity
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/owen-jones. "Kemi Badenoch is the most rightwing leader in Tory history. Isn’t it time she got some actual scrutiny? | Owen Jones | The Guardian." October 6, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The author argues that Kemi Badenoch is getting an easy ride in the media and polls only because her rival Nigel Farage has been embroiled in scandals, not because her own policies are good. He claims that if people actually looked closely at her positions—on defense spending, climate change, welfare cuts, banking regulation, and civil liberties—they'd see she's the most extreme rightwing leader the Conservative Party has ever had, and that her agenda would seriously harm the country.
Conclusion
Kemi Badenoch is the most rightwing Tory leader in the party's history and deserves far greater scrutiny, as her policy programme would be ruinous for Britain
Premises
- Badenoch's rise in popularity is largely due to Farage's scandals and lack of media scrutiny rather than her own merits, since her tenure coincided with Starmer's government imploding and Reform UK dominating attention
- Her proposed air defence system is both poorly costed (£10bn vs. estimated £100bn+ needed) and misdirected, ignoring the more urgent threat of climate change
- She has reversed her own prior position on net zero, now calling it 'impossible' despite previously telling parliament it would cost less than 2% of GDP, and her current stance contradicts the government's own climate advisers
- Her economic agenda, modeled on Javier Milei's Argentina, proposes £23bn in welfare cuts based on misleading statistics (as confirmed by the UK Statistics Authority), which would strip support from legal immigrants, reinstate a child poverty-inducing benefit cap, and primarily harm sick and disabled people
- She advocates weakening bank regulations (ending the ringfence between retail and investment banking) despite the lingering lessons of the 2008 financial crash
- Her authoritarian positions contradict her stated free speech principles, including advocating bans on pro-Palestinian protests, withdrawal from the ECHR, an ICE-style deportation apparatus, and scrapping the public sector equality duty she once supported
Assumptions
- Policy reversals or inconsistencies over time indicate political opportunism or lack of principle rather than legitimate evolution of views
- A politician's rising poll numbers driven by a rival's decline does not reflect genuine scrutiny-tested popularity
- The comparison to Javier Milei's policies in Argentina serves as an accurate predictor of what Badenoch would do in the UK context
- Reduced media attention due to competing political stories is the primary cause of insufficient scrutiny of Badenoch, rather than her positions being broadly acceptable to voters
- The author's characterization of policies as 'ruinous' reflects an objective rather than ideologically-colored assessment