Bad Enoch: How Kemi Badenoch's Rise Exposes the Dire State of the Conservative Party

If the culture war loving MP is the best the Conservative party has to offer, then they are heading for an even longer period in opposition than most people assume

Where’s Kemi? That was the cry heard over the past two weeks as racist mobs took to the streets of the UK.

Badenoch’s extended was particularly striking given the sheer scale of disorder we have just experienced.

Over the course of two weeks, racist lynch mobs launched a series of attacks on mosques, the police, and the attempted burning of a hotel full of asylum seekers.

Yet, with the exception of a single comment, in which she sought to blame the unrest on a failure of “integration” by migrant communities, the frontrunner to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative party leader had absolutely nothing to say about one of the longest periods of racist violence in our history.

Absolutely nothing that is, aside from a defence of somebody who has spent his entire career stoking the very hatred that triggered the attacks.

In a Tweet sent on Tuesday, Badenoch defended the fascist commentator and friend of Tommy Robinson, Douglas Murray, after video emerged of him calling for a “brutal” pogrom of migrant communities in the UK.

Badenoch insisted that Murray, who has previously called for a ban on all immigration from Muslim countries and said that “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board” should be protected from criticism.

“It is no surprise they want to cancel Douglas but they will not succeed,” she Tweeted.

So is this really the sort of person the Conservatives are about to elect as their new leader, and if so, what does it tell us about the state of the party and its prospects of ever regaining power?