Kemi Badenoch refuses to be a victim — so the Left is trying to victimise her

It’s still tough at the top for a black woman — especially if you are a rising star in the Conservative Party. It didn’t take long for the Left to come after Kemi Badenoch, who was promoted in last week’s reshuffle to the rank of Minister of State, with a wide range of responsibilities ranging from levelling up to equalities. Ms Badenoch refuses to be a victim — so her enemies are trying to victimise her.

A series of leaked private messages and recordings have been published by the online platform Vice, which alleges that she “questioned same-sex marriage”, called trans women “men”, “dismissed the impact of colonialism” and “mocked Black public figures”. While both the minister and the Government have declined to respond, this campaign is clearly intended to smear Ms Badenoch.

The Labour Party instantly condemned the comments as “disgusting” and questioned her fitness for office. Other Tories have come to her defence: Sir Bernard Jenkin, chairman of the Commons Liaison Committee, says that her accusers are “trying to hound women like Kemi Badenoch out of politics”, adding that white men like himself are not subjected to the same tactics by the “hard Left”, because “they know that a Conservative Party with more women and BMEs will become an unstoppable political force”.

What precisely is going on here? Vice claims the texts were leaked by a member of an obscure group called Conservative Friends of Nigeria. Many ordinary people will agree with much of what Ms Badenoch is alleged to have said in the leaked voice recording. Her remarks about sexual equality are framed as a critique of the American obsession with the trans issue: “…so now it’s not just about being free to marry who you want, you now want to have men using women’s bathrooms”. None of the comments quoted substantiates Vice’s claim that she “appears to mock gay marriage”. On the contrary: she supports gay rights, just as she supports women’s rights. The fact that self-appointed LGBT lobbyists, such as Stonewall, may disapprove of her is neither here nor there.

In a series of undated WhatsApp messages attributed to Ms Badenoch, she offers a robust view of pre-colonial Africa and rejects the culture of black victimhood: “I don’t care about colonialism because [I] know what we were doing before colonialism got there. They came in and just made a different bunch of winners and losers. There was never any concept of ‘rights’, so [the] people who lost out were old elites not every day people.”

Her views are debatable, but she is careful not to dismiss the slave trade; nor is she defending the human rights record of European empires in Africa or elsewhere. The point she is making is, rather, that there were empire-builders in Africa before the Europeans arrived and that it does not serve the interests of the black community in Britain to focus constantly on imperial history. Many black Britons share her views, but they seldom get an airing in public.

As for Ms Badenoch’s comments about other black politicians: not only Conservatives but plenty of others will agree with her. Asked whether Sam Gyimah, presumably then a minister, was a potential leader of the Tory party, she replied: “F*** no.” Given that Gyimah subsequently left the Conservatives over Brexit and became a Liberal Democrat, Ms Badenoch is entitled to feel vindicated — though she would probably not have used such strong language if she had known that it would be made public. She also wrote that Diane Abbott, “practically the only black woman you see discussing politics”, had disgraced herself on television by “not knowing her brief”. She added: “That kinda stuff is sooo bad for us.”

All of the views that Ms Badenoch is alleged to have expressed, evidently several years before she became a minister, seem entirely within the bounds of fair comment. The murky provenance of these supposedly offensive comments also renders them dud ammunition for Labour. She deserves to be treated with a little more respect by the Opposition, which is too quick to rush to judgment.

Of course, ministers of the Crown should be careful about what they say or write, even in private — but voters like politicians who hold strong views and who speak their minds. Kemi Badenoch is hugely talented and was widely tipped to become Education Secretary in the reshuffle. In my view, she should long since have been in the Cabinet. I have been arguing in this column for more than three years that she is the future for the Conservatives and could well be the first black woman to become Prime Minister.

This is not the first time that Kemi Badenoch has been targeted: Huffington Post UK ran a hostile campaign against her under the editorship of Jess Brammar, who has just been appointed as head of News at the BBC. It will probably not be the last, either. But it will take more than Left-wing smear campaigns and character assassination to stop her. If Boris has any sense, he will stand by Kemi, no matter how much mud is thrown in her direction.

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