Political triumph
What does Kemi Badenoch’s election as the leader of the Tories mean? I never thought that the Tories, who tend to be traditional, would pick a black woman as their leader. But she beat Robert Jenrick by 12,418 votes. Some say having a black woman as the Conservative party leader is a big moment for multicultural Britain. Others argue that her views are so right-wing that she is not going to do anything for black people. The Labour member of Parliament, Dawn Butler, who is black herself, accused Badenoch of representing “white supremacy in blackface”.
Badenoch was born Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke in London to Nigerian parents, but Anglicised her first name. She and her husband, Hamish Badenoch, a British banker, have three children. She was the business secretary in the last government and claimed to have resisted India’s demand for a more liberal visa regime while negotiating a bilateral free trade agreement. At a time when Caribbean countries are claiming ‘reparation’ amounting to hundreds of billions of pounds, Badenoch has endorsed the following opinion: “The transatlantic slave trade was no more important for the British economy than brewing or sheep farming. The idea that the Western world, and Britain in particular, were built on colonial exploitation and plunder, has become extremely fashionable... in recent years. It serves as an ‘original sin’ story of the West, which also doubles up as an original sin story of capitalism. But it is almost certainly empirically false.”
Powerful words
I think Rishi Sunak partly cleared the path for Kemi Badenoch. He demonstrated to the Tories that colour is no longer relevant in British politics. Sunak’s final speech as the Tory leader in the House of Commons was befitting his role. He blew the Labour government’s first budget out of the water. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, looked ashen as the smile drained from her face.
These days, there is talk of Sunak’s legacy. To my mind, Rishi (as everyone calls him) was wrong to resign as chancellor from Boris Johnson’s cabinet two years ago. But Sunak remains the most brilliant politician in the country, the Sachin Tendulkar to a host of struggling county cricketers. Sunak’s last speech was perhaps his best. He spoke of a budget “that contains broken promise after broken promise. And reveals the simple truth that the prime minister and chancellor have not been straight with the British people.” The next day there were letters in the Daily Telegraph, expressing regret that he was going. For example, Ray Powell from Shefford in Bedfordshire, observed: “In his last hurrah, Rishi Sunak exposed all of Labour’s lies and sleights of hand. He was on incredible form. Could either of the Conservative leadership candidates have matched that performance? I doubt it. Does he have to stand down?” Maybe he became PM too soon — Sunak, after all, is only 44.
Back in the limelight
Since becoming the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch has been allocating portfolios in her new shadow cabinet. No one saw this coming but Priti Patel has been given a top job as shadow foreign secretary. She, too, is on the right-wing of the Conservative party. She has done a number of ministerial jobs, including home secretary, one of the great offices of state, under Boris Johnson. He thanked her in his resignation honours list, so she is now “Dame Priti Patel”. She was born in London in 1972 to parents who fled Uganda. It was David Cameron who picked her out, made her the PM’s “diaspora champion” and took her to Delhi and Calcutta in 2013. Cameron asked her to lead the UK negotiations when Mamata Banerjee was in London. But she went against Cameron and joined Johnson on the Brexit side during the EU referendum in 2016. Narendra Modi will be happy as Patel is one of his greatest supporters in Britain and received him at Heathrow in 2015.
Postcard from Japan
Maya Tagore from Honolulu and her relative, Sundaram Tagore, a gallery owner from New York, met last week at the Victoria & Albert Museum. This was where a reception was being held to mark the 27th edition of “Asian art in London”. This brings together art, artists, collectors and gallery owners from across the globe. Maya told me that her father, Sandip Kumar Tagore, went to Japan to study textile art and design in 1957, met and married his fellow student, Eiko Matsumoto, in 1958, had two daughters and lived in the country until his death in 2021. A student of Santiniketan, he did much to promote artistic exchanges between India and Japan.
Maya gave me her father’s lyrical book, Peopled Azimuth, in which he describes how the chant of “Buddham sharanam gacchami” in Japan, “the land of dreams”, enchanted him and “caused a spate of tears to run down [his] cheeks”.
