Giles started all six interviews with the same question to the candidates: why should it be you ?
KB: So it should be me… because I am… someone who believes that the Conservative Party needs to renew.
… and the Conservative Party means more to me than just a job. It’s my family.
I’ve been a member since 2005. I’ve done everything, you know… been an area officer, an assembly member, deputy chairman, and, you know, I met my husband… he was my deputy. He was my deputy chairman…So the party means something…. It’s very visceral, the love that I have for the Conservative Party and understanding that it is not just something that people use to, you know, be an MP or to become Prime Minister.
We are custodians of a tradition that is hundreds of years old, and we need to make sure that we hand something back to the next generation.
And I think every candidate has a different pitch, but mine is very much of the view that we are at an existential crisis. I always thought 1997 was the worst election result we’d ever have… we have 25 per cent fewer MPs, and we need to make sure that this party exists in five years time, but not just exists: is healthier, stronger, and able to form a government.
We have unprecedented threats from Reform, Lib Dems, Labour, and now Greens, all of these people sit in Parliament in a way that they never did in the 80s and 90s or even the early 2000s… it’s existential, and understanding that in order for us to look like a government in waiting… we can’t look like the last government that we were, is key…
… and that is why my campaign is focused around renewal, rather than around me.
GD: You’ve sort of touched on this already, saying that “you get it”… Do you think the party that you love gets it too…. does it understand what’s just happened to it and why it happened?
I think a lot of people understand it, but I wouldn’t even say that I know exactly what went wrong.
If you speak to different people, you will hear different critiques: “Oh, we were too left-wing, or we were too too right-wing or too centrist” And so everybody sees… you know, it’s like that, that poem… about the elephant and the six blind men of Hindustan… everybody’s feeling a little bit and saying, “Oh, it was the leg”, “or it was the tail”…
…but actually, we need to bring all of that together.
I don’t think any one individual gets it, and that’s why Renewal 2030 is about mass membership, mass movement, getting the intelligence from the entire body politic of Conservative Party membership, rather than just the MPs or just the most dedicated hard-core activists and so on.
We have more talent in our party than the other parties… we don’t use it, and that’s one of the reasons why we started failing. We became, in my view, more managerial, and we stopped talking about values, and it was all policy: micro-policy tweaks here, or we’ll raise the housing targets a little bit, or we’ll cut income tax by 1p… or just …just little things that didn’t tell a story about who we were and what we’re about. And that is why people vote for you.
I remember knocking on doors and you’d hear people say, I voted Conservative all my life, so I’m not going to change now, but I’m really disappointed. They had a tribal loyalty…it wasn’t because of a policy offer or a manifesto offer.
They thought that we were for people like them, and this is where the problem with Reform has come from. We, I’m afraid, signaled that we were not for people like them. And that moment, in my view, started when we took the whip off Lee Anderson, which is something which I was very much against.
Before it even happened, I had messaged the Chief Whip. I said, “Let’s not do this. I don’t think that this… I think this sanction is too much. I know people are calling for it.”
But while we thought we were carrying out internal party management, lots of Reform voters looked and thought, “Ah, they don’t like people like me. They don’t want people who have these views. So we’re going to go elsewhere.” That, for me, was what lit the touch paper for Reform in a very big way, and we paid a huge price for that.
So we’ve got to make sure that we look at all of the things that happened. It wasn’t just one thing. Was little things like that that were building a picture, building a story, and getting into our minds how we can do better and renew for the future.
GD: There is a balance to be struck, isn’t there, between practicality, managerial… and values, and that’s a difficult equation to get right. How will you do that?
KB: It is a very difficult equation to get right, and it’s particularly difficult in government, where sometimes you’re on a road and you can see that the landscape is changing, but it’s very hard to get off the road that you’re on… without looking like you’re going around in circles or having a U turn…. This is one of the few, one of the very few, benefits of opposition: Labour’s just won a landslide majority.
It’s double, in fact, more than double, the majority that we had with Boris Johnson. And everyone knows that we are not going to be implementing any policies. A lot of people are not even paying attention to us. They want us to go away. This is the optimal time for us to start looking into ourselves about what does being a Conservative for the 2020s… really, for the 2030s… look like?
That’s why the campaign isn’t just called Renewal but Renewal 2030.
Keir Starmer actually talks about national renewable… he doesn’t explain it. We need to say what the 2030s should be… I thought that the 2020s were going to be “the Roaring 20s”, which just won that majority in 2019 and you know what could go wrong?… I was turning 40. It’s going to be amazing. Two months later, it was Covid… maybe three months…. two years later, the Prime Minister was gone. And then now we’ve got a Labour government for the rest of the decade, and that just goes to show how difficult things are in this new era. Very hard to manage.
GD: We’ll come to Labour but you’ve already brought up Reform. Is it Reform you think we need to get closer to… or Reform voters?
KB: Definitely Reform voters.
We don’t…. We should not treat Reform differently from any other party. We wouldn’t invite Keir Starmer to come and join our party because: ”he’s got loads of voters… so why doesn’t he come in? We can do that with Ed Davey”… we shouldn’t do that with the leader of any party, and that includes Reform.
But of course we want Labour voters to come to us. Of course we want Lib-Dem voters to come to us, and of course we want Reform voters to come to us, and the way to do that is by being the very best version of ourselves. It’s not about copying their policies. You don’t win market share by copying someone else’s product. You have to innovate. You have to do something that is genuinely new and beneficial. It is … democracy is a free market. You have… it’s competition. We are Conservatives. What we do need to do is compete, not co-operate.
GD: How will the party change its structures, its operations, and its functions under your leadership?
KB: So this is one of the things that I think could be very exciting.
….And I am not going to pretend I have all the answers, but there is a unique opportunity for us to turn our party into a mass membership organisation that is fit for the future, one that attracts people of all ages, not just the people who remember the 1970s and the 1980s… one which is compelling in terms of the offer that it is providing, and that’s going to need a lot of deep thinking.
So one of the things I’m not doing is saying: “Well, you know, we’re going to have… we’re going to make these changes” and so on… I know what I think about what went wrong, but my opinions are not the only ones. That is why I want a movement that brings in lots of people to feed in.
I think, for example, that people want to see a lot more transparency in what goes on. That’s how I’m running my… campaign. So with Renewal 2030 the Campaign Director and other senior people regularly have Zoom meetings where everybody who signed up just hears about what they’re doing….people can ask questions. We should be doing that in our party as well.
Why is it, for example, that we don’t get minutes of the party board? If you’re a shareholder in a company, you would get the board directors meetings, which all happens in closed doors. And it’s why, for example, I don’t have policies like “let’s elect a new party chairman” because we elect a lot of people already, not just the leader, but the Convention. It’s very hard to actually know what… what happens, because we don’t communicate. So let’s open things up a little bit.
I would like to have lots of policy commissions similar to what David Cameron did in 2005 because it means that you can flush out quite a lot of things that aren’t coherent. One of the mistakes I think we made in 2019 was having a single-issue election….(it) was “get Brexit done.” We had an 80-seat majority to get Brexit done, and then there was no majority for anything else… everything then became a scrap, became an argument, whether it was on home building or lockdown or whatever, we just were not cohesive, and we’re going to have to go through that process.
Anyone who says “Well, all we need is a new… a new set of policies”… still doesn’t get it. It’s not about just having a different policy offer. We need to have to think deeply about how our values match the offer that we give the public.
GD: You are, if you are Leader of the Opposition, tasked with the job of being the official opposition. So how do you get to grips, whilst trying to do all of this deep thinking, with doing that job from day one?
Yes… because I can chew gum and walk at the same time. (laughs)
So this is …Doing many things has been my entire political career. Since I became a minister. I’ve always had two… three jobs.
When I became Education Minister (Children and Families Minister) I had to do the Apprenticeship Minister role as well because they didn’t appoint anyone to do it. And since then I’ve always…. with the Treasury: I was Equalities Minister, when I did business and trade, I did trade, and then they gave me business, and I still did Minister for Women and Equalities, as well. So I know how to do a lot of things at the same time.
And the key thing is to make sure we have an excellent team… and to delegate appropriately. Yes, there are going to be… there’s going to be an internal party policy review if I do win, but there’s also going to be a second track of just being a good opposition. We can do both things at the same time, but it’s about who you pick and not… so it’s not going to be….a Kemi leadership with, you know, “all her best friends”.
You know, my friends are great…you know… I love them. I love my mom, but I’m not bringing, like, my family and friends to help them to sort out the party, even my MP friends, it’s gonna be who is best. We need to live by our values. Meritocracy is one of our values. Even people who don’t support me have amazing talents, which we need to keep… and bring on board.
But I think people can see what I can do.
I have always… I mean they say that I’m combative… I’ve…. the combat has always been with Labour… when they try to present us as a racist party, when they try to do us down on Brexit, when they try to make a scandal about postmasters …I didn’t let them get away with it, you know, I let them have it.
I defend our party when other people do not, and that is what I would do as LOTO. My first outing against Angela Rayner went viral because …it’s actually a lot easier to say what you think in opposition, rather than having to go with the collective line that… that’s been agreed.
And we are going to expose the Labor Party for what it is. They are opportunists. They have no plan. Look at Keir Starmer talking about…” oh, he’d set up a wealth fund”… That’s not how you…(because he wants wealth creation)… taking taxpayers money and borrowing is not how you generate growth…they don’t know what they’re doing…and we can expose that.
GD: If I remember rightly, when you say you were doing different jobs at DfE, you were also being a mum at the time?
KB: Ahhh that’s good memory, how do you remember that?
GD: I have a very good memory.
Yeah, I went on maternity leave and had my baby about two months after being appointed.
GD: So you know, being Leader of the Opposition, people want to know more about you. They want to feel like they know you. (KB laughs) And I have a feeling you’re not always comfortable with that. So what do you want people to know about you that isn’t… what you’re capable of, what you’re good at… What do you want them to know about you as a person?
This is, this is a very interesting question, because a lot of people who know me very well, say, “Why are you… Why do you have …this sort of very serious persona? Because that’s not, that’s not who you are. You’re actually a very jokey, you know, prankster, fun… fun person.”
You know, my favourite thing to do is play poker. That’s what… that’s who I am.
But the reason why is because I think that it’s very hard to keep your family and your people in your private life, away from the problems of politics. And I try… I try and make sure that I separate my private life from my public life. And I found that when I have been very, very open, very self-deprecating, it’s actually been used to not just attack me, but attack people who I’m close to…my husband and so on. So that is why I do have probably a more serious facade than others.
GD: So are you ready for this role? Because you know the level of intrusion is so much higher when you’re in that position?
Absolutely ….but I have had more intrusion than the average cabinet minister ever had.
But I think…The Guardian, for example, hates me because I always criticise when they’ve got it wrong… ALL the things which I believe in… they hate… and they see me as a big threat. And so they have been particularly nasty and awful. But I’m used to it.
So I’m a very, very tough person. You know, my husband says that I have the ability to absorb quite a lot of, you know, of pain and conflict in a way that other people would would just give up. So, you know…. he actually says that “you were built for this…(laughs)… you were built for this job” in a way that…(he used to be a parliamentary candidate)… in a way that he probably thinks would have been too much… too much for him. So I know what I’m getting myself into…
…but this is… Leading your party is not a promotion or an award. It is very much a sacrifice. It is about sacrificing yourself for the greater good. And yes, I know that there’ll be a lot more intrusion. It will have an impact on my family. This is why having a spouse who’s a party member who believes in it, he believes in in the mission (you know, Renewal 2030, is a mission. It’s about reminding people about who we who we are)… and so the bit of myself that people probably don’t see is the fun side. I’m all about having fun, and I think our party stopped being fun.
Keir Starmer is no fun, and he’s gonna… the rest of this decade is going to be absolutely miserable. I mean, look at that speech he gave. It was the most depressing thing. And I’m actually a very optimistic fun person….but when it comes to my job, I’m very serious, and also when it comes to people who try and smear our party, or try and make Conservatives out to be nasty, useless, yeah, whenever that’s happening in the media, media, I always am very, very robust with them, and people tend to see that because I feel like it’s my job to defend our party, to defend our members.
I mean, The Economist wrote an article a few months ago where they called Conservative Party members “swivel-eyed loons”, and I messaged the editor of The Economist. I said “You should not be speaking about people like that, do you think this is appropriate?
She didn’t, she didn’t reply, but we should be doing more of that…. How dare you speak about Conservative Party members like that? These are the salt of the earth… they are amazing people, and we’ve allowed… we’re sometimes too scared to just say ‘no’ and be robust when we are attacked. But if we allow other people to tell our story for us, it’s not going to be a good story. We have to get out there and tell the good story
GD: To those that say they were a little disappointed to feel like your campaign started months ago, not weeks ago, what would you say to them?
KB: It’s not true.
I always focus on the job that is at hand, and despite having many misgivings about the decisions that were being taken in government, I believe that the principle of collective responsibility is key. I was always focused on making sure I could support Rishi rather than go out and do my own thing…
…but people will always say that: I remember… reading one thing, where people said I was being nice… so I must have a leadership contest…or I had drinks in my office? “They must be for leadership!”
If you don’t do those things, then people say that you’re aloof.
And so there’s no winning.
Whatever you do as a politician is going to be criticised. So in my view, you have to do what you believe is right, rather than worry about what everyone else what everyone else is saying. But it’s not true that I had a leadership campaign running. In fact, if people are asking, “why is my campaign moving at a different, slower pace than others?”
It’s because I only started, pretty much at the end of July. I did not, you know, even as a Shadow Cabinet member… I wanted to make sure that I understood the Housing and Local Government brief properly. And focus for me is absolutely key. So people will say what they want to say, but certainly it’s not true.
GD: You are seen as a candidate of the right. Are you?
KB: I’m very much a candidate of the right, but many of the people, who are my friends, or my social circle are not of the right, and so what makes me different is that I am a candidate of the right who can speak to people, not just on the left, but people who are not even political …
…You wouldn’t find …even when I was saying things that you would classify as right-wing, I didn’t run into trouble, or people saying, “Ooh,” you know, “Gaffe!” There was no “Kemi’s made a gaffe” or anything like that. Because there is a way in which those of us on the right need to speak in order not to sound shrill and to win people over, and that’s what’s different about me.
I’m a candidate of the right…but most of the people in this country are people who have common sense. Common sense is the thing that gets the vast majority of people… it’s where the common ground is. Politics, I don’t think is as linear as people think it is. It’s very 3D and it’s about getting the common ground the majority of people, rather than just the people who are of the right.
Yes, of course, we need to solidify our base. We need to stop people on the right from going to Reform or elsewhere, but it is about presenting a right-wing platform that is acceptable to people who are not on that side of the political spectrum.
GD: And having said that… this is the last question to everybody… I believe that it’s really important who the winner is, but also, what do the losers do next? Is everything you’ve said going to still stand firm if it’s not you?
KB: Yes, absolutely. And this, this is something which I try and explain to to many people who say, “Why are you doing this now? You know that whoever does this is going to be William Hague. You need to sit this out and wait until later.” And I tell them that actually, there’s a job to do.
You don’t get to pick the cards that you are dealt. And right now, the job that needs to be done is rebuilding the party. It’s not just about being leader. If my campaign was called “Kemi for Leader” then you might think that, well, she’s gonna, you know, she’s gonna go if she’s not the leader.
There are other people who have done that who left the party when they didn’t win the election… I don’t need to name names…but this renewal that is required is a long-term project, and if I can’t do it as party leader, if the party decides that someone else is better, I will try and I will certainly support them, and I will try and do what I can, in a different way.
GD: Kemi thanks very much indeed for talking to ConservativeHome.
KB: Thank you, Giles
This article was originally published in Conservativehome
