Kemi Badenoch bats for Rupert Lowe

Normalising the far-right, one Public Accounts Committee seat at a time

Kemi Badenoch (House of Commons)

With notably rare exceptions (Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron’s “we’re all sinners” gambit), I struggle to manufacture surprise at politicians’ answers. Even when I don’t agree with the argument, consider the approach misguided or merely clumsily expressed, I can at least see it coming.

So it was with unpractised astonishment that I listened to an interview with Kemi Badenoch, during which she carved out the time to praise Rupert Lowe, leader of the far-right Restore Britain party, for his work in Parliament. How did we get here?

Accountability to the public

Last October, the Conservatives agreed to give one of their seats on the influential¹ Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which scrutinises the value for money of government projects, to Lowe. At the time, a spokesperson for the party defended the move on the basis that Lowe "shares our values on cutting waste". I can’t speak to the veracity of this claim but it could not be more tangential.

Lowe leads a party that is endorsed by Elon Musk and bolstered by the X algorithm, has received public backing from far-right activist Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) and, as reported by the Telegraph, has received donations from people such as Steve Laws, founder of Remigration Now, which calls for the expulsion of every non-white and Jewish person from the UK.

Rupert Lowe (House of Commons)

Pressed by Politico’s Anne McElvoy on why, given all this, she appointed Lowe to the PAC, Badenoch replied that Lowe “turns up to work” in contrast to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. Conspicuously absent from that defence is any distancing from what Lowe actually stands for. He is instead fungible with any other Tory. Don’t believe me? Badenoch goes on to say:

“He is doing a decent job. He is doing what a Conservative on that committee would probably be doing.”

To be fair, she stopped short of complimenting Lowe on at least getting the trains to run on time.

Cordon blues

In the narrowest, most near-term of political senses, one can just about see the Badenoch game. Farage is her main rival on the Right. If Restore Britain can eat into Reform UK’s lead, both in the national polls and individual seats, then the primary beneficiary may well be the Tories.

I mean, ok, but remind me where the Tories finished in the Makerfield by-election?

(BBC)

More to the point, by making nice with Lowe, Badenoch is crossing a rubicon. The cordon sanitaire — intended to keep out the extremes of Right and Left, what with their racism, threats of violence and actual violence — is not in a good way. As Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think tank, wrote in The New World earlier this year:

[A] party with no limits on the racism and prejudice it will accept will struggle to get beyond a 5% ceiling… The real threat of this new political racism is to the social norms of our society. That is what must be resisted.

Have I Got Jews For You

Alongside many British Jews, I appreciated Badenoch’s full-throated condemnation of the ever-rising tide of antisemitism in the UK, which in the last few months alone has seen synagogues set on fire and Jews stabbed on the streets of North London — while some of the political class shrugged their shoulders in disinterest.

But by appointing Lowe to the PAC and then brushing off any criticism, Badenoch appears to reveal herself to be yet another politician who is opposed to the racism — in this case antisemitism — only of her ideological opponents, be they the far-left, Islamists or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

And here’s my problem with that approach. As a Jew, every racist is my ideological opponent! I’m not especially fussed if your conspiratorial antisemitism is predicated on Jews running the banks and the media, on obsessive hatred of Israel or the Great Replacement Theory — it’s all a threat to my freedom and very ability to participate in civic life.

And it necessarily forces me to consider whether, should the Tories come to view Jew hatred as a vote winner, might they be persuaded to join the bandwagon too?