In a pre-conference interview with BBC News NI yesterday, Kemi Badenoch made a striking but very on-brand assertion. “The last time I checked, Northern Ireland did vote to leave,” she declared with confidence of the 2016 EU referendum.
In reality, of course, Northern Ireland voted to remain by 56-44, a margin greater than the Leave vote in either England or Wales (Badenoch eventually conceded that “a lot of people” in Northern Ireland voted to remain).
Was this a verbal slip of the kind that can happen to anyone? It seems unlikely. Here’s a more plausible explanation: Badenoch believes that Northern Ireland should, by its essence, have voted to leave the EU. (The province is a place often beloved of Conservatives – Enoch Powell ended his political career in the Ulster Unionist Party.) She holds this belief so strongly that she hallucinated that it actually did. The people of Northern Ireland, who were anxious about the hard borders that Brexit would necessitate, were an afterthought.
This is how ideology can distort reality – the same happens when Remainers exaggerate their past or present strength. Badenoch’s new pledge to repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act is another example. Far from being the electoral elixir that the Conservative leader might imagine, it threatens to further depress Tory support. Only 20 per cent of Britons, polling by YouGov shows, believe that the UK is doing too much to reduce carbon emissions (compared to 32 per cent who believe it is doing too little and 25 per cent who believe it is doing about the right amount).
Badenoch’s promise, made as she strives to avoid a no-confidence vote that becomes permissible from 2 November, has fractured what remains of the Conservative coalition. Theresa May, the kind of Tory who enjoys respect among those who defected to the Liberal Democrats – a party that won 60 Conservative seats last year – has warned that it is a “catastrophic mistake”. Ruth Davidson, who oversaw a Tory recovery in Scotland in 2016, has derided the “false facts and wrong-headed statements” that underpinned Badenoch’s announcement.
There is little evidence that net zero is a major driver of Reform support: a majority of those who backed the party in this year’s local elections support the UK’s climate targets. Here is one reason why the issue has not become the defining flashpoint in Labour that some anticipated. An insurgent Green Party, threatening the anti-Reform coalition that Keir Starmer needs, makes any U-turn on net zero still less likely.
British voters are not hairshirt greens – Labour promises them lower energy bills, not material sacrifices – but there is no great pool of clnimate sceptics waiting to be soaked up. If there is a future for the Conservatives, it will be as a serious centre-right alternative, not a Reform tribute act. For voters who want the former, opposition to climate change is a basic political hygiene test. In forgetting as much, Kemi Badenoch is seeking to lead a country that does not exist.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[Further reading: The Labour right is fracturing]
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