The Guardian view on Kemi Badenoch: lacking substance, courage and judgment | Editorial

In the absence of action, politicians can only be judged on their words. This is the perennial problem for opposition parties – how to persuade voters of your fitness to govern without access to levers of power. It is a challenge that is defeating Kemi Badenoch.

The Conservative leader has said little of substance. Her stances, so far, are all reactive gestures. She has committed to reversing some of Labour’s tax-and-spend decisions. She is demanding a public inquiry into historical child abuse cases on the grounds that previous inquiries failed to “expose those who turned a blind eye to grooming gangs”.

This is not a serious programme. Naturally the opposition disagrees with the government and says it would do things differently. But the Conservatives were expelled from office less than six months ago. The choices Labour is making are, in many ways, clearing up the dismal legacy bequeathed by the outgoing administration. If Ms Badenoch doesn’t like the way that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, plugs gaps in the budget then she should identify better ways, and show contrition on behalf of her party for leaving the exchequer in such a mess.

As for child abuse, the Tory leader’s fixation on this issue does not follow any compelling evidence of deficiencies in previous inquiries. The more obvious motive is new salience that allegations of a cover-up have acquired in radical rightwing circles online, amplified by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

Ms Badenoch’s argument owes more to crackpot conspiracy theory than statecraft. She claims police, local authorities and politicians “colluded” to shield grooming gangs, yet did not raise this while in cabinet. If such a conspiracy did occur, renewed investigation of it could surely have begun when the Tories were still in government. Yet Ms Badenoch apparently remained silent on the issue as a minister. Her newfound campaigning zeal looks confected and cynical.

The same can be said of Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, whose sudden, ardent interest in this topic is couched in terms that would not be out of place in far-right propaganda. Mr Jenrick asserts that the rule of law was suspended to allow men of British Pakistani origin to commit crimes with impunity, and that the root problem is a policy of “importing hundreds of thousands of people from alien cultures, who possess medieval attitudes to women”.

That is not the language of a politician who is interested in representing modern Britain in its full diversity or who cares whether his interventions stoke inter-communal tension and race hatred. Since Ms Badenoch stands by her shadow justice secretary it must be assumed that she, too, recognises no threshold of responsible discourse. Or that she lacks the courage to discipline a former leadership rival. Either way, she looks weak and her judgment is poor.

Even as grubby opportunism, Ms Badenoch’s method is misguided. The Tories lost more seats to the Liberal Democrats than to Reform last year. A poll revival does not go by way of increasingly fanatical adventures in digitally enhanced, racially aggravated paranoia. Beyond electoral strategy, the opposition leader has a constitutional duty to challenge the government without degrading the political process. The last Conservative government set a low bar for looking competent and credible, yet still Ms Badenoch cannot clear it.

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