Oh, Kemi – it was all going so well

Ten minutes into her speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Conference on Monday, Kemi Badenoch permitted herself a Cheshire cat grin.

The Conservative Party leader had gradually outlined her vision of a crisis of Western values, articulating the ideological weaknesses of both left and right. Here at last was the moment she would offer her solution to her political party’s malaise; the punchline that she knew would rouse the room.

“People ask me what difference new leadership will make. Well, take a look at President Trump. He’s shown that sometimes you need that first stint in government to spot the problems. But it’s the second time around when you really know how to fix them. And it starts by telling the truth.”

Oh, Kemi. What does truth mean to a Conservative Party leader in early 2025? For much of Badenoch’s speech, she spoke with pinpoint accuracy about the problems plaguing Britain and its fellow Western democracies.

To those of us who hail from the centre-right, she is spot on to state that “the West has given the world amazing ideas and values”; spot on also when she took aim at the murky marriage of regressive leftists and right-wingers who “doubt liberal values of confidence and free trade, demanding a ‘post-liberal’ road”.

Then she compared herself to Trump.

Much of Badenoch’s speech has been misreported. It is not the case that she dismissed the humanity of other ethnicities or national groups. When she insisted that “some cultures are better than others”, she did so after laying out clearly the superiority of liberal and democratic political structures, specifically her own experience of corruption and autocracy in Nigeria.

In one of the best parts of her speech, Badenoch directly addressed young people tempted by fascism: “I was born in London, but grew up in a country with a military dictatorship and strong leaders who did away with pesky liberal values like democracy, because people voted in bad politicians.”

When she asserted that “some cultures are better than others”, she was not doing so in a sop to Faragism, but as its liberal opponent, a woman who understands all too well what it meant to grow up in a nation haunted by previous decades of what she termed “strongman politics and ethnic nationalism”.

As Badenoch said of the Nigeria of her parents’ youth: “They flogged teachers, shot journalists. People disappeared. Dead bodies were found on the streets. Without the ability to speak freely or trade freely, the government controlled everything.”

Which is why it remains so disappointing, to those of us who share that pride in a true liberal tradition, that Badenoch just can’t bring herself to dissociate from President Trump.

Her echo of Trump’s own mantra for his second term – his promise to rip up the structures of US government – was hardly the only such moment in Badenoch’s speech or her recent media tour. Last month, she called him “a force for good” in the world.

On Tuesday, in an interview with the American Free Press newsletter, Badenoch was asked about Trump and replied: “He wants to make America great again. And we need to start thinking about how we do the same here.”

Yet while she was prepping to tell the Arc conference that the West’s greatness stemmed from “the rule of law and equality under it”, Donald Trump was writing the contrary on social media. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump pinned to his feeds on Saturday.

It is no secret that Badenoch is in trouble. Farage advances on her right flank, although there was one glimmer of hope in otherwise pessimistic polling released by the More in Common group this Tuesday: the Conservative leader scores higher than both Farage and Starmer when 2,000 voters were asked who would handle the economy best.

Like every leader of a centre-right party in Europe this year, she has a choice: embrace the worst instincts of Putin-influenced populism, or affirm a conservatism that conserves and champions the very Western political traditions that both Putin and Trump seek to destroy.

For three quarters of Badenoch’s Arc conference speech, she seemed to be making a passionate attempt at the latter tack, even taking aim at those in her party who would like to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. (“We were members of this convention for half a century without this madness.” She then went on to attack judges for interpreting the Convention with too much generosity towards criminals, but not the Convention itself.) Yet even when she commences a full-throated defence of muscular liberalism, Badenoch just can’t stick the course.

She ended her conference speech with an awkward hop from the defence of liberal values to full-throated Trumpism, telling listeners: “Don’t listen to the media class complain about populism. The very essence of democracy is acknowledging the will of everyday people and then actually making it happen.”

Trump talks a lot about the will of the people. John Stuart Mill, the founder of liberal values Badenoch now claims to defend, described the same concept as a mechanism by which the majority, “or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority”, may oppress minorities and lead to “tyranny”. Mill may be buried far away in southern France, but he’s turning in his grave loudly enough to be heard in Westminster.

Badenoch ended her speech with the words: “It is time to speak the truth.” Only that, she had prefaced, would allow the next generation of conservatives “to lead the world back from the precipice”.

What does truth mean to a Tory leader in an age of Donald Trump? Just last Friday in Munich, US Vice President JD Vance uttered a litany of easily provable lies about the United Kingdom: among other points, he falsely alleged that the Scottish Government has banned prayer in private homes within the vicinity of abortion clinics. Badenoch, speaking to Weiss, praised Vance’s Munich speech as “dropping some truth bombs”.

No doubt that will play well in Washington, where the Tory leader is anxious to cultivate friends. Yet if she really wants to stand up for the Enlightenment’s values of democracy, liberalism and truthfulness in public life, she needs to channel some toughness – a favourite virtue of Badenoch, much referenced in her recent speech.

It will be tough to tell the truth about Trump. But to inspire British voters, the Conservative leader needs to acknowledge that the greatest threats to Western values are not only in the Kremlin. They are in the White House.