Multi-coloured Tory leadership 2022: ethnic alibis for anti–”wokeness”
Posted by admin978 on July 10, 2022 · Leave a Comment
The political circus of modern Conservatism has pitched its tent in the full glare of media attention. Racial nationalists and (more broadly) traditional patriots are looking on in despair.
On 7th July Boris Johnson – despite having won a landslide majority in December 2019 to deliver Brexit (and for better or worse, having largely succeeded in doing so) was forced to resign. His departure will be delayed until election of a successor.
Until this afternoon there were no fewer than twelve candidates either declared or on the point of declaring. (Within the last hour this was reduced to eight nominated candidates for tomorrow’s first ballot.)
And the most striking aspect is that the most traditionalist, anti-“woke” candidates are from ethnic minorities.
Suella Braverman, whose parents were ethnic Indians (partly Goan) arriving in the UK from Africa in the 1960s, is presently Attorney General. Three years ago she attracted criticism from left-wing and Jewish lobbies after daring to state that her party was committed to “a battle against cultural Marxism”, though nothing she has said or written suggests that she has any advanced understanding of what this term means.
When announcing her leadership bid a few days ago, Braverman told an interviewer: “We need to get rid of all this woke rubbish.”
Meanwhile Kemi Badenoch, who until last week was “Equalities Minister” in Johnson’s government, launched her campaign with an article in The Times that focused heavily on anti-“woke” arguments.
Badenoch, daughter of Nigerian immigrants, wrote: ”Our country is falsely criticised as oppressive to minorities and immoral, because it enforces its own borders. We cannot maintain a cohesive nation state with the zero-sum identity politics we see today.
“Exemplified by coercive control, the imposition of views, the shutting down of debate, the end of due process, identity politics is not about tolerance or individual rights but the very opposite of our crucial and enduring British values.”
What is truly pathetic about this leadership contest so far is that so-called “right-wing” conservatives are hiding behind the skirts of black women, apparently in the belief that in 2022 any opinions that might remotely be described as “racist” can only be expressed via a non-White spokeswoman.
Thus the Conservative Party leadership contest has become almost like the multiracial dystopian vision of London depicted in the series Gangs of London.
Ethnic backgrounds of the initial twelve declared or likely contenders included:
a Nigerian (Kemi Badenoch); a Goanese Buddhist (Suella Braverman); a Pakistani Muslim (Rehman Chishti – dropped out) and an Pakistani apostate Muslim (Sajid Javid – dropped out); two Indian Hindus (Rishi Sunak – present favourite – and Priti Patel – dropped out); an Iraqi Kurd and apparently apostate Muslim (Nadhim Zahawi); a Jew (Grant Shapps – dropped out); and a semi-Jew (Tom Tugendhat).
Only three of the eight nominated or initial twelve potential candidates are of straightforwardly British or Irish background going back three generations or more: Jeremy Hunt, Liz Truss and Penny Mordaunt.
Some readers might be surprised that of the nine ‘ethnic’ candidates, only one was a practising Muslim, and he dropped out having come nowhere close to securing sufficient nominations. This is Gillingham MP and imam’s son Rehman Chishti, recently appointed to a junior post at the Foreign Office. Chishti took his oath of allegiance as an MP on the Koran, but also had copies of the Torah and the King James Bible placed on the despatch box during his swearing-in. Even such conspicuous devotion to multi-faith liberalism got him nowhere.
