No one will be surprised that all of the candidates for the Tory Party leadership are a threat to working-class and oppressed people. After all, the Conservative Party is the oldest capitalist party in the world and is steeped in class privilege, racism and misogyny. This is equally true whether their leader is a white man or a Black woman.
Conservative ideology is based on harking back to the former ‘glory days’ of the British Empire: colonialism, slavery and stark inequality. Whilst the party has been forced to adapt — even being responsible for some reforms such as same-sex marriage — fundamentally they are representatives of the most right-wing elements of the ruling class.
Their raison d’être is to keep the status quo, to enable the rich to become richer on the backs of the working class. Whatever means they can use to keep the working class divided and controlled, they will use — they are not particularly principled in this regard.
However, deep within their philosophy is the role of the family as an economic unit and a method of social control. Key to this are gender roles — men as the breadwinner and women as the homemaker — which is why the existence of transgender and gender non-conforming people bothers them so much.
The final vote to decide the new Tory leader is taking place on 31 October, and, as we go to press, the candidates have been whittled down to Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch. Robert Jenrick has been nicknamed “Robert Generic” because he is a stereotypical Conservative MP — pale, male and stale. Whilst Kemi Badenoch, as a woman of colour who identifies as a first-generation immigrant, having been born to Nigerian parents in Britain but lived in Nigeria and elsewhere as a young child, may appear different, they are both supported by the right wing of the Conservative Party.
Essentially they are vying for the same vote — the Tories who think that Sunak was not hard line enough and that if they are going to challenge the rise of Nigel Farage and Reform UK, they need to move further to the right.
Frenzy of xenophobia, racism and misogyny
Jenrick resigned as Immigration Minister in the last government because he felt that the Rwanda plan did not go far enough. He has made immigration his main focus, pandering to the far-right protests and riots outside hotels housing refugees. Using rhetoric that is not dog-whistle but overtly racist, he said that refugees “cannibalise communities by importing different lifestyles and values”.
Last year, in a move to rival the spite of a movie villain, he even ordered staff at an asylum centre for unaccompanied children to paint over children’s cartoons on the walls to provide a less welcoming atmosphere — a move he has been forced to say he regrets to appease more moderate Tories.
Meanwhile, Badenoch enthusiastically agrees that those seeking asylum represent a threat to British communities, claiming that “not all cultures are equally valid”. Without a hint of irony, Badenoch served some time as the Minister for Women and Equalities in the previous Tory administration and contributed to the ‘culture war’ — a battle invented to scapegoat oppressed people as the ones to blame for the problems working-class people face in Britain after 14 years of Tory rule.
Trans people were the target for Badenoch, who described gender-affirming healthcare as a “new form of conversion therapy”. She opposed gender neutral toilets in public buildings and called for a change to the Equality Act so that sex is defined only as someone’s biological sex. This perpetuated dangerous myths about trans people, especially young people, that there was some kind of sinister agenda behind being who they want to be.
Badenoch’s political heroes include Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher — two ruthless fighters for the capitalist class, intent on crushing the working class in order to maintain the position of the wealthy.
Her arrogance and lack of empathy is also reflected in her comments in a pamphlet claiming that people with autism or anxiety disorders “get better treatment” in schools and workplaces — something that “offers economic advantages and protections”. Many people struggling to access the crumbling mental health services or dwindling support for students with SEND in schools would no doubt contest this preposterous claim.
Jenrick, a keen supporter of the Israeli state, lacks any sympathy for the tens of thousands killed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, indicated by his flippant comments in 2020 that he “looks forward to the day when Britain’s embassy in Israel will be moved to Jerusalem”.
As both Jenrick and Badenoch compete for leadership, they are continuing to whip up a frenzy of xenophobia, transphobia, racism and sexism. This has real life consequences for those facing oppression around the world — in war-torn countries, facing the need to escape and seek asylum, being a person of colour, a woman or a queer person.
Labour, the party of no resistance
Although the Tories are settling into what looks to be a long period of opposition, having suffered their most decisive defeat in 25 years, the party faithful are nevertheless showing little sign of turning from a path of deepening right-wing belief. Characterised by increasingly emboldened attacks on minorities and LGBTQ+ communities, the unemployed, the mentally ill and most recently the ‘over-generous’ provisions in the welfare state for women, this Tory leadership battle is shaping up to be the most appalling race to the bottom yet. But is Labour any better?
Despite hailing his government as one of change, which would sweep away the inequalities of fourteen years of Tory rule, the opening months of Starmer’s Labour government have seen little innovation on the policy books. The interests of the many over the few are far from Labour priorities and as their distance from working-class issues increases, so does their distance from popular approval.
The last YouGov poll placed Starmer at his lowest ebb of public opinion yet, with 63% of the population believing he and his party are failing. The Labour leader is now as popular as Nigel Farage, of whom 28% have a positive view and 63% a negative, and who seemingly spends less than half his time on this side of the Atlantic.
With the numbers ever more dire, Starmer is seeking validity by pandering to those taken in by Farage’s reactionary ideas, and showing to the capitalists that he is a ‘responsible’ Prime Minister.
Whether it is through the immediate axing of winter fuel allowance for hundreds of thousands or the warnings of private infringements into the health service being unavoidable, austerity in all but name is making itself felt on the accounts of the exchequer and the pocket of the working class.
The culture wars rattle on in the language of aggressive border control, in the narrowing of access to puberty blockers and the continued cutting of mental health benefit provisions. While far from Whitehall, the result of the mainstream use of such rhetoric is the continued fuelling of reactionary groups — the likes of which tore through cities across the UK in August.
From Tommy Robinson heralding his triumphant return to the UK to meet his thugs or the continued targeting of migrant services and communities, the right are far from defeated.
Time for a new left party
What does this tell us? With both parties increasingly indistinguishable in policy and values and the challenges facing the working class remaining unabated, we need meaningful change. Rather than the false promises of the right populists, who rely on divisive rhetoric while leaving capitalist interests untouched, we call for a new party by and for working class people.
