If modern politics has left you feeling that up is down and left is right, then Kemi Badenoch seems to have some sympathy for you. In the middle of her densely argued 40-page political pamphlet, released on Monday, she attempts to explain much of modern politics using simple geometry and a topsy-turvy sense of direction. And somewhere within these two shapes is the central argument of the document – titled Conservatism in Crisis: Rise of the Bureaucratic Class – released by Badenoch’s Conservative leadership campaign. The somewhat cryptic diagram on page 16 shows two triangles split in half. The first has a horizontal line through it, with the word “right” at the top and “left” at the bottom. Another is split down the middle vertically, with “right” and “left” side by side. But in the latter, the word “right” is on the left-hand side, and vice versa.
The explanation for the triangles is actually relatively simple, even if the resulting policy prescriptions in the 40-page document are not so much. The triangles seek to note a key difference between 20th- and 21st-century politics. With the first, the vertical divide stands for the traditional idea of affluent voters, nearer the top of the economic pile, leaning to the right, with poorer ones underneath favouring the left. The second triangle shows a new paradigm, based not on economic tiers but values. But why, in the second triangle, the one split laterally, are “left” and “right” the wrong way round? A spokesperson for Badenoch was unable to provide an answer. As succinctly explained by Badenoch herself in an introduction, politics is “no longer about class in the old sense” but more about belief-based splits that often result in more educated, urban voters aligning with the left. The problem with this, Badenoch and the pamphlet argue at length, is that the left-leaning world has constructed around itself a regulation-based, entrepreneurship-crushing ecosystem that is stifling economic growth. Reminiscent in parts of the writings about the “new elite” by the academic turned activist Matthew Goodwin, it also takes aim at what Badenoch calls “a victimhood and complaint culture” that becomes self-sustaining and self-rewarding. What can be done to reverse this? Here matters become slightly more woolly, but it appears to involve fewer HR managers and compliance staff, and an end to “pointless university degrees” that inculcate young people into this cosy left-leaning world without making them more economically productive. But, besides the left-right reversal, there is another mystery in the document, not least who wrote it. This is not stated, and Badenoch’s team say only that it is “a Renewal 2030 pamphlet”, the name of her wider campaign. But the document does say it will soon be expanded into a book.