Badenach is following the classic Atlas network prescription - take no prisoners, destroy, destroy, destroy.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/08/kemi-badenoch-tories-elon-musk-far-right-conservative
Kemi Badenoch was supposed to make the Tories serious again. She has
failed | Rafael Behr
The House of Commons is built for confrontation, with rows of benches
facing each other across an aisle. When the original Victorian chamber
was blitzed to ashes during the second world war, Winston Churchill
was adamant that the antagonistic geometry be preserved in the
restoration. He spoke dismissively of the foreign, semi-circular
assembly, which �enables every individual or every group to move round
the centre, adopting various shades of pink according as the weather
changes.�
Churchill was leading a national unity government, but that was a
wartime expedient. Normal democratic hostilities resumed as soon as
Germany surrendered. MPs might rebel against their whips, or even
defect, but it takes a national calamity or international crisis for
Labour and Tory leaders to declare themselves on the same side.
Donald Trump�s inauguration later this month isn�t an emergency of
that kind, but it makes one more likely. The incoming president
respects neither democratic principle nor diplomatic convention.
America will still be an essential ally to Britain, but not a reliable
one. The relationship will be shaped by petulance, surprise and
ultimatum.
That will make the prime minister�s job incredibly difficult. It will
also test the official opposition. There is no natural affinity
between Keir Starmer, the liberal-left human rights lawyer, and Trump.
But doing business with unpalatable partners in the national interest
is in his job description. Kemi Badenoch�s challenge, as leader of the country�s oldest-established party of the right, is more subtle. She
doesn�t have the pressure of running foreign policy, but she does have
a constitutional role and a duty to British democracy.
How Badenoch responds to Maga mania radiating across the Atlantic
matters because she is the gatekeeper of mainstream conservatism. She
has a choice: police the boundary where reputable Tory tradition
shades into racially aggravated nationalism, or hasten the dissolution
of that line.
Her preference is signalled by the decision to endorse attacks on the government over child abuse cases in the terms dictated by far-right
conspiracy theorists, amplified by Elon Musk. The core allegation is
of a cover-up, and it is false. There was an inquiry with a report
published in 2022. Labour�s choice not to hold another inquiry when recommendations of the first one are still being implemented is the
same decision the Tories made when they were in government.
Anyone who has met Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, knows she
is an independent-spirited veteran defender of the rights of women and
girls against sexual violence. Any politician who isn�t viscerally
appalled by Musk�s absurd and grotesque description of Phillips as a
�rape genocide apologist� can be disqualified from the debate. (Nigel
Farage says it was a fair exercise of free speech.)
Anyone who listened to Starmer�s defence of Phillips on Monday could
tell he was venting genuine and justified anger at a dangerous and
cynical campaign of misinformation. (Badenoch accuses the prime
minister of �smear tactics�.)
No party leader who is interested in one day governing on behalf of
every British citizen could endorse the view expressed by Robert
Jenrick, shadow justice secretary, that the real problems are
multiculturalism, men of Pakistani origin and �importing � people from
alien cultures�. Badenoch appears to share that analysis.
An instructive comparison can be made with a lucid rebuttal that
former Tory attorney general Dominic Grieve posted on X, dismantling
one of Musk�s attacks on Starmer�s record as director of public
prosecutions. �Baseless innuendo does not contribute to serious
debate,� Grieve concluded. Indeed not, but it harvests clicks.
Grieve was one of 21 Tory MPs who had the whip withdrawn in 2019 as
punishment for voting to obstruct a no-deal Brexit. He represents the
tradition of centre-right liberal Conservatism that was once a
doctrinal pillar of the party but is now anathematised as remainer
heresy.
Curiously, Badenoch describes herself as a �classic liberal�, but in
her idiosyncratic usage that means crusading against imagined leftwing infiltration of the public sector. She has declared herself �excited�
by the prospect of what Musk will do for an incoming Trump
administration as head of a newly created Department of Government
Efficiency. She predicts that �it will be absolutely brilliant.�
That enthusiasm prevents the Tory leader voicing qualms when the tech billionaire calls for Britain to be liberated �from their tyrannical government� and for the prime minister to be jailed. Musk doesn�t
speak for the incoming US president, but his trolling malevolence
contains enough Trumpian spirit to serve as a warning of what politics
might look like in the coming years.
Full-frontal opposition is the engine of accountability in British
politics. But there is a parallel tradition of collegiate
bipartisanship when more is at stake than scoring a cheap point; when,
for example, mendacious personal attacks on the prime minister by a
powerful foreign oligarch look like systematic interference in the
democratic process.
The last few days have been a test for Badenoch. She could have opted
for serious opposition. She could have understood that her job
includes a responsibility not to debase political discourse, not to
propagate wild inflammatory rhetoric, not to tacitly endorse calls for
the overthrow of the government. Or she could hitch a ride on a
far-right internet bandwagon as it rattled past, without pausing to
consider where it might carry her or the country. She made her choice.
It was a peculiar decision for the leader of a party that boasts of
its organic connection to the institutions and habits of British
democracy; the party of Churchill. But that isn�t Badenoch�s party. It
just shares the name. Hers is a newer, shorter lineage. She hails from
the House of Brexit, the natural successor to Boris Johnson, Liz Truss
and Rishi Sunak in a tradition defined by incoherent bombast, culture
war performance, policy as gimmick, intellectual vacuity clad in
libertarian verbiage.
Badenoch may not know it, but the pattern of her leadership is set.
The trajectory is all too familiar. It is the path of least moral
resistance, gravitating inexorably rightwards, laundering fanaticism
through the mainstream Conservative brand, striving to make the
unacceptable sound respectable.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
Also worth looking at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Network
(See the close links to tobacco, oil and gas industries, the high
level of donations from the wealthy and those interested in avoiding
taxation on international activities, the high level of donations
funding the organisations, and the links to New Zealand . . .
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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