William Watson: In new pamphlet, U.K.’s Kemi Badenoch points the (right) way

I’ve just read a remarkable political document. Eighty-three pages. Nothing but text. A very grey 400 words per page. Not a single photo. No shots of the author shaking hands, cutting ribbons, kissing babies or beaming in the adoring glow of an ethnically balanced group of supporters. None of that. Just text. 

The document is The Right Way, by Kemi Badenoch, leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, which, largely because of her influence, is just one point behind the Labour government in the latest polls and, for the first time in a long time, ahead of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. 

The Right Way, patterned on pamphlets the Conservatives published in 1976 and 1977 at the dawn of the Thatcher era, is Badenoch’s attempt, as she puts it, to “reset and reclaim the intellectual foundations of the Conservative Party.” 

What she’s resetting them to, as excerpts below show, is Thatcherism itself: government that is smaller and fiscally responsible but also, because less extended, stronger and more capable, not least in foreign affairs. Kemi-ism (or maybe Badenoch-ma) also includes a healthy overlay of British values, which the more libertarian Mrs. Thatcher presumably shared but, before the ascendancy of identity politics, didn’t feel the need to make explicit. 

Badenoch’s stated rationale for appearance of The Right Way is that, in addition to a list of platform promises at election time, political parties owe voters an account of where they’re coming from, so the public can get an idea of how they might react to the sea of unanticipated troubles that will inevitably beset them once in power. The actual rationale may be that voters still want to know how the Badenoch Conservatives are different from the Cameron-May-Johnson-Truss-Sunak Conservatives, who had 14 years in which to turn the country right, and Right. 

Badenoch’s answer, in effect, is that her predecessors as Tory leader largely gave up on Thatcherism and accepted the modern media view that there’s no problem, actual or perceived, that government shouldn’t have a go at trying to solve. They also, too often, wanted to be nice, as people do, partly in order to shed the Tories’ reputation as the “nasty party,” a phrase coined by Theresa May in 2002 when she was party chair. 

Badenoch, a personable, diminutive British-born woman of Nigerian heritage, seems to have no qualms about being categorized as mean or nasty. As she writes, “What is really missing from politics today is people prepared to say no.”

And she clearly understands why saying no is important. The Right Way quotes American economist Thomas Sowell not once, but twice: “Economic policies need to be analyzed in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the hopes that inspired them,” and “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” Serially quoting Thomas Sowell is a very good sign in a potential prime minister. 

Reading The Right Way, it’s impossible not to think of Canada during the Trudeau years, when all the syndromes Badenoch warns of were on full view virtually daily. Unlimited demands on government. Endless lists of official priorities. Ministers, including a prime minister, who revelled in announcements but were bedevilled by delivery. A willingness to say no only to the standard bogeymen of the left: hydrocarbon producers, Big Pharma and Tech, right-wing provinces, Republican America and Netanyahu’s Israel. 

Canada actually figures twice in The Right Way. Though Badenoch doesn’t credit Pierre Poilievre, she promises, referring to the U.K.’s carbon tax, to “Axe the Tax,” a construction used to great effect by our Conservative leader on the Canadian version of that tax. 

And she mentions Mark Carney outright, though only to disagree with him — which many conservatives will consider further evidence of wisdom. In her section on foreign policy, she writes that “Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently argued that today’s world is multipolar, with ‘middle powers’ all enjoying a good deal of agency and influence. I am not so sure.” And she goes on to paint the picture of a world of two superpowers, though that “does not mean every other country is condemned to irrelevance.” Britain — others, too, presumably — can yet remain “a great power,” though this will require “small but excellent armed forces,” as well as the ability to “sustain a major war.” 

That Badenoch or her speechwriters can craft a clear, sharp, clever critique of modern governmental bloat obviously does not mean she will necessarily win power or, having won, reshape Britain on Thatcherite lines. 

But — Canadian conservatives, take note — the smaller-government ideas she favours are serving her well at the moment.

These are excerpts from The Right Way, a pamphlet recently published by British Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch:

Faced with almost any problem, the easy answer is to demand government do something. I want to see proper questions asked first. As an engineer, my training forces me to start with the simple ones: such as what is actually causing the problem? What incentives have previous decisions created? How will people change their behaviour in response? What’s missing? Which costs are visible and which ones aren’t? Is government genuinely the institution best placed to act? …

Growth in the size of the economy has too often been mistaken for growth in wealth and prosperity. But a larger population can increase total output even when output per person barely changes … We should not have stagnation here, but too much time, too much talent and far too much capital are diverted or driven elsewhere by the conditions government is creating …

If we want to get Britain hiring, employers need to see a new worker as an opportunity, not a liability … Yet successive governments have treated profitable businesses and high earners as cash cows to be milked for revenue, while making it more expensive and riskier to employ people by increasing taxes on jobs and introducing legislation that makes it harder to sack poor performers …

An individual tax or rule may appear tolerable, but the cumulative burden of payroll taxes, business taxes, reporting requirements, employment rules and regulatory uncertainty changes behaviour. Investment is postponed or, worse, happens elsewhere. The government then observes weak growth and responds with another scheme intended to encourage the very activity its own policies are discouraging …

New regulation is easy to add and difficult to remove. Each rule acquires a constituency of vested interests. Regulators are criticized for the failure they permit, but seldom for the enterprise they prevent. Ministers can claim credit for action by announcing a new power, while the slow, expensive work of enforcing an existing rule or simplifying a system attracts less attention …

Government always loses its way when it judges interventions by their intentions and dismisses how people would respond …

(Too often we have treated economic) … growth as an outcome government could announce rather than a process it had to enable. Ministers adopted targets, funds, strategies and sectoral schemes because a minister gets a headline for launching a fund, not for deciding that an existing competitive market should be left alone …

A cap, subsidy or mandate does not abolish a cost. It just transfers it, often to someone who won’t directly notice — the taxpayer or a customer who has to pay higher prices as taxes push up the price of goods …

Subsidies, guarantees and direct public investment … can be justified where there is a clearly identified public benefit that private investors cannot capture … But ministers must state what public benefit is being bought and why the market will not provide it. Simply labelling these investments as “strategic” is not enough …

Net Zero scepticism is not climate-change scepticism… Climate change is real. Net Zero by 2050 is a badly designed political program to tackle it …

We want Britain to have a government that can do its job well… That requires a strong state, not a hyperactive one that tries to do everything but does nothing well …

The hard part of governing is saying no. There are tens of thousands of people identifying worthy things for the state to do, including almost all the legislators in Parliament. There will always be genuine problems and reasonable demands for intervention. But priorities are not priorities unless government is prepared to decide which worthy things it will not do …

An interesting way of knowing whether the Civil Service is a meritocracy is looking at what it does with those who do not perform well. Apparently, not much … Between 2022 and 2025, the Department of Health and Social Care sacked just five permanent civil servants for poor performance …

Expansive human rights law has prevented governments from doing things the vast majority of voters would like to see done. If, for example, a government wants to deport a foreign child sex offender, it should be able to. If the law says it cannot, Parliament should be able to change the law. Ministers should be able to make decisions. If people don’t like those decisions, there are elections …

The first question should not be what (government) can do about a problem but whether the problem requires government intervention at all … The difficulty is that the political pressure is to announce action, while the benefit of deciding not to intervene is much less visible …

What is really missing from politics and government today is people prepared to say no. Political parties now need to recruit those who have the stomach to say no to good causes when the resources simply are not there to do everything …

Over time, Britain has convinced itself that crime, idleness and bad behaviour are ills to be explained away rather than clamped down upon. The result is a culture in which many people think they can do whatever they like without sanction… Crime and disorder are not always a cry for help. Sometimes they are laughter in the face of authority …

Over several decades, elected politicians of all parties have been treating international law, courts and treaties not just as valuable instruments for co-operation, but as the be-all and end-all of political and legal choices. This approach … has done the most to undermine our sovereignty …

Patriotism does not require pretending Britain has never done anything wrong. No serious country needs fairy tales about its history. We must be realistic about our failures so we stop repeating them. But there is a difference between learning from the past and teaching each generation to regard its inheritance principally as something to dismantle or apologise for …

People who make Britain their permanent home should embrace our culture… Assimilation does not require people to erase their family history, religion or private traditions. It does require common allegiance and common rules. This is why we say, if you join a country, you join the country… Loyalty to Britain and her culture and traditions, as well as a rejection of imported sectarian conflicts, must come before all else.

Excerpted from The Right Way, by British Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.