The Choice for Britain’s Tories

Who will lead Britain’s Tories out of the political wilderness? The conservatives in July got a shellacking in the general election with Prime Minister Sunak as the party leader. Now the world’s oldest political party has a choice of two relatively fresh faces to serve as His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition — and, one can hope, lead the way back not only to a majority, but to a revival of conservative principles in a nation that is listing to the left.The choice before the Tory Party members will be between two members of Parliament — Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick. The runoff coming down to these two candidates, both of whom lean more to the right of the party, startled observers this week. The front-runner had been a more moderate MP, James Cleverly, who had urged the party to move to the center and be, in his words, “more normal.” Yet he was eliminated in the balloting of Tory MPs.The Tories’ choice to drop Mr. Cleverly, in the BBC’s telling, prompted “open mouthed shock” and what the New York Times called “audible gasps of surprise.” If that’s how those two stalwarts of the left-wing establishment see it, though, the Tories must be doing something right. Now that the party’s representatives in the Commons have made their decision, the final choice falls to the party’s national membership via mail-in balloting.Of the two prospects, Mrs. Badenoch is better known here across the pond, in part due to what might be the Trump-like quality of being “pugnacious in articulating her conservatism,” as the BBC puts it, and “willing to say what others won’t.” Our London-based columnist Julie Burchill calls her “simply the best of our island race; born here, but raised in Nigeria where she did her homework by candlelight.” Ms. Burchill adds that “it was so important to the teenage Olukemi Adegoke to be a true Brit” that she returned to the Sceptered Isle “alone at the age of 16 to complete her education, working at McDonald’s in order to put herself through college.” Ms. Burchill points with particular appreciation to Mrs. Badenoch’s maiden speech in the Commons, in which she called Brexit “the greatest ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom.”That high-flying rhetoric, one imagines, would be music to the ears of Tory voters. “Listening to her,” Ms. Burchill observes, “a poor betrayed post-hope Briton thinks of everything that always held us together, from the Blitz to the Beatles.” Concludes Ms. Burchill: “Beautiful, bold Mrs. Badenoch is going to look mighty appealing to a jaded electorate in four years time.” If not sooner, one might add — given recent events.That said, when it comes to backing Brexit, Mr. Jenrick is no slouch, even if he voted in 2016 to remain. Feature his opposition to keeping Britain under Europe’s Convention on Human Rights. Abiding under this treaty means betraying Brexit’s promise of severing legal ties with the European Union. It would, Mr. Jenrick avers, make it “impossible to secure our borders.” He’s also a sartorial critic of Hamas as a band of terrorists, per the Daily Mail.In contrast with Mr. Jenrick’s clarion call for British Independence, Prime Minister Starmer took a trip last week to Brussels to curry favor with the EU mandarins and rhapsodize over Britain’s “unique relationship” with the superstate. We lamented it. Sir Keir also vows to keep Britain bound under the rights convention, which hamstrings the U.K.’s ability to deport migrants pressing phony asylum claims. It’s a critical test of British self-determination.A caution for the two relatively inexperienced candidates, per the Telegraph’s Charles Moore, is to avoid “floundering around” as they “desperately guess what might attract” what he calls their “somewhat demoralized electorate.” All the more reason for Mr. Jenrick and Mrs. Badenoch to stress the opportunities offered by Brexit to an independent Britain, and to point the way toward what Churchill called the “broad, sunlit uplands” of freedom.

The Choice for Britain’s Tories

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