Badenoch is fishing in a toxic cesspool of racism and war

Editorial / 6 October 2026 The rot of British war crimes starts at the very top of the Establishment 6 October 2026 Editorial / 5 October 2026 US flight from RAF Fairford: let’s finish the job and make it permanent 5 October 2026 Editorial / 4 October 2026 No more war, no more fascism: the message of Cable Street 4 October 2026 Editorial / 2 October 2026 Cable Street’s historical lessons are we must unite today's struggles into one 2 October 2026 Editorial / 1 October 2026 We do not need another Brexit debate 1 October 2026 Editorial / 30 September 2026 Build a cross-party campaign for socialism 30 September 2026 Editorial / 30 September 2026 Irresponsible scaremongering over the RAF Fairford incident incites racism and war 30 September 2026 TORY leader Kemi Badenoch appears not to recognise that she is playing with fire. Her address and those of her shadow cabinet ministers in Birmingham this week have contained as much dog-whistling as a TV programme with the late Barbara Woodhouse.

Stopping the boats? Check. Mass deportations of “illegal immigrants”? Check. A beefed-up Ice-style force to hunt them down at the rate of 150,000 a year? Check. Little or no public assistance for asylum-seekers awaiting a decision? Check. No more recourse to the European Convention on Human Rights and its court in The Hague? Check.

How the Tories have loved it, handing Badenoch a standing ovation at the end of every sentence during yesterday’s speech. Their tails wagged furiously with every sneering, self-satisfied word. But they were not the main audience that the leader of the pack had in mind.

No, she’s licking her lips at the prospect of winning back a million or two Reform UK voters, as Nigel Farage’s pack-hounds chase their tails alongside the police and the Electoral Commission.

This may take some doing, however, as the multimillionaire leaders of Reform UK splash the cash of their billionaire backers on a massive new media and communications strategy.

The Tory leader will also have to win the fight for disaffected Farage followers against the super-rich, far-right leader of Restore UK, Rupert Lowe. She hopes to bribe away their fat-cat sponsors with promises of tax cuts for the rich and yet more deregulation of the capitalist jungle.

All three right-wing party leaders are fishing in the same cesspool. Whatever the outcome of the contest, Badenoch’s rhetoric yesterday can only add to the poison polluting mainstream political debate in Britain today.

Unless the left, progressive, democratic and liberal-minded people — those dubbed “hate marchers” by Badenoch when they demonstrate against racism, militarism, war and genocide — can unite and defeat the far right, the peoples of Britain will pay a heavy price in the not-too-distant future.

Already, the heirs of Sir Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts march on our streets with impunity. So-called online “auditors” are stopping non-white residents in some of our towns and cities and asking whether they are legally entitled to live here. No condemnations from Badenoch for them, yesterday, except when their targets are Daily Mail journalists or British army veterans.

Should the day ever come when these thugs roam our streets with the full support of central government and the state, Badenoch’s declarations of loyalty to the British “nation” may weigh less heavily with the racists and fascists than the colour of her skin.

Nevertheless, one significant feature of her address in Birmingham was its class content. She rubbished any significant role for the state in the management of the economy. Public ownership of firms and industries that had to be rescued from ruin by the state was condemned with sweeping contempt.

She bemoaned the high price of energy for business and domestic consumers in Britain yet uttered not a word of protest about the profiteering racket that is privatisation. Obviously, US President Donald Trump’s illegal war against Iran is above criticism. Water privatisation and pollution? Not a word.

Instead, she tried to paint Andy Burnham and his Labour government as spendthrift socialists, even slipping in a lie that Jeremy Corbyn favoured disbanding Britain’s armed forces.

The Labour leader’s only credible response must be to come out fighting: for public ownership of strategic industries instead of privatised racketeering, for energy security, for decent pensions and welfare benefits for all those in need, for progressive taxation instead of gross inequality, and for peace and humanitarianism not aggressive war and genocide.