Perhaps it’s
inevitable that a person elected to the leadership of a major political party
starts to believe that the whole world is hanging on his or her every word.
It’s a heady position in which to find oneself, with access to media coverage
all but guaranteed. An exaggerated sense of self-importance comes with the
territory. But there’s the ordinary, everyday exaggerated sense of
self-importance – and then there’s Kemi
Badenoch. In her case, it’s
not just an inflated sense of the importance of what she has to say; she
genuinely seems to believe that the whole future of Western civilisation is now
hanging on her ability to renew the English Conservative and Unionist Party.
‘Renew’ is another of those ‘interesting’ words which means whatever the person
using it wants it to mean, but is intended to convey some sort of revival. In
her case, it seems to include the elimination of dissident thought, another of
those British values which seems to have passed me by.
Uniquely, it seems, in
her deluded understanding of world events, the values that make the West what
it is – or at least, her interpretation of those values, which just possibly,
maybe, might not be the same thing, although it would be a brave person that
might try and tell her that – are now uniquely to be found amongst those in
that party who think like her. And she seems not even to realise the extent to
which she is carving out a minority status for herself, even amongst the
dwindling ranks of her party’s membership.
The thing is, it’s
actually difficult to discern from what she says what her understanding of
those values is. Certainly it seems to include the right to hold and express
racist or misogynistic views, to discriminate against anyone who doesn’t
conform to ‘the norm’, and to believe that some entire cultures
are inherently inferior to the one to which
she thinks that she belongs (although, whisper it quietly, at least some of
those to whom she is seeking to appeal might just harbour some doubts as to
whether she can ever fit into their own definition of the superior culture).
The problem with banging on about British or Western values is that they are
pretty poorly defined. What the term actually means seems to depend on the
perspective of the person banging on about them at the time. But to the extent
that there are some underlying shared values, I had thought that they included
things like the rule of law, fairness, equality, compassion and tolerance, none
of which actually seem to shine through her words on the issue. Perhaps the
values changed at some point and I just didn’t get the memo.
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2 comments:
Rather amusing that what these boneheads claim as "British values" were opposed every step of the way by the British establishment. They are Enlightenment values.
It is of course the vagueness of the values that is important to her. She knows that most people never look at the detail of what a politician means so by ‘standing up for British values’ she hopes to earn votes from those who support British values, and whatever they each mean by that, but by ignoring the details do not realize that the values mean something completely different to her.
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