Kemi Badenoch’s Special Relationship

Call it the “Special Relationship, Brexit-MAGA edition.” What else to make of the new Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, out of the gate in the Commons with a spirited defense of President Trump? “Punchy and confident” is how the BBC described Mrs. Badenoch’s sparring with Sir Keir Starmer over whether the leftist premier and his coterie are up to the task, in Trump’s next term, of “building on” the traditionally close transatlantic ties. Mrs. Badenoch, congratulating the 47th president-elect, zeroed in on anti-Trump vitriol by the Labor foreign secretary, David Lammy. Britain’s top diplomat has previously called President Trump a “tyrant in a toupee” and a “profound threat to the international order.” He even described Trump as a “neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath.” Did Mr. Lammy apologize for these comments, Mrs. Badenoch asked. If not, would Sir Keir do so now?The questioning seemed to set Sir Keir back on his heels, forcing him, per the BBC, “to insist the UK-US ‘special relationship’ remains intact.” Mrs. Badenoch was having none of it. Sir Keir’s approach, she averred, was “Discuss, discuss, discuss, chat, chat, chat — he has no plans whatsoever for building on the special relationship.” What about, say, the need to boost defense spending to meet British obligations under the North Atlantic Pact? Will Sir Keir “match the commitment the Tories made,” Mrs. Badenoch asked, “to raise defense spending to 2.5% of national income by 2030?” While the prime minister professed to back the goal, Mrs. Badenoch noted that last week’s tax-and-spend Labor budget, in the BBC’s account, “did not mention defense.” That belies Sir Keir’s words of support, Mrs. Badenoch contends, even as he croons of “no more important duty” than keeping Britons safe.As for that Labor budget, Mrs. Badenoch “went for the jugular,” the BBC said. The plan, which calls for some 40 billion pounds in new taxes and nearly 30 billion pounds in new borrowing, would by 2030 bring government levies up to 38.2 percent of Britain’s economic output, Reuters reported. Mrs. Badenoch derided it as a “copy and paste of Bidenomics” and asked Sir Keir whether, like President Biden, he anticipated being a “one-term leader.”The pugnacity of the new Tory leader marks “a different approach to the last opposition by being constructive opposition.” It calls to mind our Julie Burchill’s appraisal of Mrs. Badenoch as “a straight-talking, clear thinker” who “will now be taking on Sir Keir Starmer, the most wittering waffler ever to lead the United Kingdom.” It also points to the affinities between an independent post-Brexit Britain and America’s posture under Trump.The Brexit vote in June 2016, after all, in some ways prefigured the groundswell here that hoisted Trump to the presidency later that year. Both the Brexit and MAGA movements reflect patriotic, populist, and anti-statist sentiments. The two movements dovetail in the same way that President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher’s anti-communist, pro-free market policies helped spark economic and political transformation in both nations in the 1980s.The arrival here before our election of a band of Labor volunteers to campaign for Vice President Harris in swing states is a symptom, by contrast, of the ties between the Democrats and Britain’s left. That effort fell flat, as seen in America’s electoral repudiation of the Democrats at the polls. As for Sir Keir, his “approval rating has collapsed more significantly after winning an election than any other prime minister in modern history,” the Independent reports.The bond between Trump’s America and an independent Britain, though, seems to have legs. Mrs. Badenoch is emerging as a spirited partner for Trump’s leadership style. Ms. Burchill says she evokes “everything that made” Britain “great — from the Blitz to the Beatles to Brexit.” As Sir Keir falters, Ms. Burchill suggests that Mrs. Badenoch could, in due time, “in both senses of the phrase,” wind up “the next leader of the United Kingdom.”

Kemi Badenoch’s Special Relationship

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