UK Tory leadership race lurches into dangerous far-right territory
The British Conservative Party is mutating at high speed into a far-right movement comparable to the anti-immigrant Alternative fur Deutschland party, which last weekend surged to power in the German state of Thuringia.
The fact that this has happened to a party that has been a symbol of British political stability for two centuries should ring alarm bells with anyone who cares about democracy. For British Muslims, the prospect is frankly terrifying.
The Tory lurch to the extreme right became hideously clear after the first round of voting for the next leader on Wednesday.
Former cabinet minister Robert Jenrick has been installed as bookmakers’ favourite after securing 28 votes from a pool of 118 Conservative MPs who survived the July general election bloodbath.
Party insiders now think he is certain to be one of the two candidates who emerge from the knockout contest among MPs and make the final selection stage, when party members choose the winning candidate.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
Jenrick has become known for his bigoted remarks. He has made three eye-catching contributions to the contest so far.
The first was his statement on GB News a month ago that “if I were an American citizen, I would be voting for Donald Trump”.
Remember that Trump, the former US president, encouraged and promoted the mob that occupied the Capitol building in a bid to prevent Joe Biden from taking up the country’s presidency. Also known for his misogynistic, bigoted and Islamophobic statements, Trump is a convicted rapist and felon, found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records.
It tells us everything we need to know about Jenrick - and today’s Conservative Party - that he supports Trump.
Inflammatory claims
Jenrick is also on record saying that as prime minister, he would be “pleased to welcome” former leader Boris Johnson into his cabinet. Given his support for Trump, Jenrick’s wish to bring back a proven liar to the top of British politics comes as no surprise.
There is no room here to get into the controversial planning decisions and links with Tory donors that were an eye-catching feature of Jenrick’s time as Cabinet minister.
The most well-known concern was his decision several years ago to approve, against official advice, a £1bn ($1.3bn) property development proposed by Richard Desmond. Desmond and Jenrick had previously sat next to each other at a Conservative fundraising event, where Desmond showed Jenrick a video of the proposed development on his phone.
Jenrick has made a career out of the hysteria surrounding what he calls 'Islamist extremism'
I don’t want to get into the rights and wrongs, but it is fair to say that the election of Jenrick would be unlikely to dispel the allegations of cronyism made against the Conservative Party, which were such a feature of the Tory years in government.
Thirdly, Jenrick has made a career out of the hysteria surrounding what he calls “Islamist extremism”.
Earlier this year, he defended then-Tory MP Lee Anderson on the grounds that “Lee is not an Islamophobe”, after Anderson declared that “Islamists” controlled London, in addition to controlling Mayor Sadiq Khan and Labour leader Keir Starmer.
Those wishing to understand the recent career of the likely next Tory leader should study his speech in the House of Commons last February, in which Jenrick asserted: “We have allowed our streets to be dominated by Islamist extremists … Now we’re allowing Islamist extremists to intimidate British members of Parliament.”
He provided no evidence to substantiate these dangerous, inflammatory claims – not surprising since none exists.
Jenrick’s response to the summer riots provided a better understanding of what he means by “Islamist extremist”. He suggested that anyone uttering the term “Allahu Akbar”, a common Arabic term expressing faith in God, should be arrested immediately.
If, as seems likely, he becomes Tory leader when the final votes are counted at the start of next month, we can expect much more of this kind of thing.
Divisive views
It’s language like this that stirred up the summer riots. This is no joke. It is shocking that someone with Jenrick’s far-right and deeply divisive views should be a Tory MP, far less Tory leader.
His closest rival is no better. Kemi Badenoch, who came second in this week’s leadership round, has a long record of Islamophobic comments dating back at least as far as Zac Goldsmith’s notorious 2016 campaign to be mayor of London.
“Why should Sadiq Khan get a free pass from hanging out with extremists just because he’s Muslim?” Badenoch asked at the time, referring to Goldsmith’s then-opponent, who went on to win the mayoral race.
More recently, Badenoch went on record saying that the victories of independent MPs in the general election came “on the back of sectarian Islamist politics - alien ideas that have no place here”.
Most troubling of all was Badenoch’s reaction to the summer riots. For a long while, as mobs attacked mosques and attempted to kill asylum seekers in one of the worst episodes of racist violence in British history, she kept quiet.
Badenoch then intervened with a robust defence of far-right polemicist Douglas Murray, a friend of Tommy Robinson, after a video emerged in which Murray had called for an attack on migrant communities in the UK.
It’s worth recalling exactly what Murray said, in remarks made before the riots: “I don’t want them here,” he said of migrant communities. “If the army will not be sent in, then the public will have to go in, and the public will have to sort this out themselves, and it’ll be very, very brutal.”
As criticism mounted of Murray, Badenoch posted on X (formerly Twitter): “It is no surprise they want to cancel Douglas but they will not succeed.”
As academic Jonathan Portes has noted: “It would be good if some journalists asked @KemiBadenoch if she thinks it’s appropriate for someone who wants to be Prime Minister of the UK to endorse a direct call for mob violence.”
Complacent analysis
Finally, let’s have a look at the Conservative MP in charge of the leadership contest. It should be stressed that Bob Blackman, who represents Harrow East, is simply the organiser of the leadership vote, with a constitutional duty to remain neutral. But the fact that Tory MPs elected him chairman of the hugely influential parliamentary 1922 Committee tells us a lot.
Blackman has a history of flirting with Islamophobic positions. In 2017, he hosted in the House of Commons events attended by Tapan Ghosh, a Hindu nationalist who has called for the UN to control the Muslim birth rate and praised the genocide of Rohingya Muslims. (When drawn to his attention at the time, Blackman said he had been unaware of Ghosh’s remarks.)
Blackman also retweeted a 2016 post by far-right activist Tommy Robinson. When the Times picked up on this, Blackman said: “This was retweeted in error. I condemn the views of Tommy Robinson and the English Defence League.”
Blackman, incidentally, describes himself as a “Chrinjew - a Christian with Jewish roots, and an honorary Hindu”. Conspicuously absent from this moniker are Muslims, many thousands of whom live in his constituency.
Middle East Eye reached out to Jenrick, Badenoch and Blackman for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Conventional analysis at Westminster holds that none of this matters too much, because the Tories will consign themselves to electoral irrelevance unless they swing back to the centre.
I am afraid this analysis is far too complacent and ignores every lesson from recent global politics, including the rise of Trump in the US and the resurgence of neo-Nazi parties in Germany.
There is one potential scenario that especially scares me: Starmer’s Labour fails in government, leaving Jenrick or Badenoch’s Conservatives the main opposition, supported by the far-right Tory media. This prospect is realistic, and for British ethnic and religious minorities - above all Muslims - a matter of deep concern.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.
