THE VOTES HAVE been cast and later today the next leader of the Conservative Party will be announced.
The race to become Rishi Sunak’s successor has come down to Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick.
Voting among Conservative Party members ended on Thursday.
The leadership election was triggered close to four months ago when Sunak stepped down as the leader of the Conservatives after his party was heavily defeated in a UK general election.
The Conservatives returned MPs in 121 seats at the July election, a huge fall from their 365-seat tally in 2019, having secured less than 25% of the vote nationally.
Speaking on Downing Street the morning after the election, Sunak apologised to the country and his party for the result.
“To the country, I would like to say first and foremost, I am sorry,” he said.
“I have heard your anger, your disappointment, and I take responsibility for this loss.”
On Thursday afternoon, hours before ballots closed, Jenrick said it was “close” and that his team were “chasing down every vote”.
However, Badenoch and Jenrick were a surprise pairing for the final two in the leadership election.
Last month, Shadow Home Secretary James Cleverly was unexpectedly knocked out of the competition, having been the favourite after the previous round of voting.
It was claimed that Cleverly’s supporters had been involved in an attempt to coordinate vote-sharing to engineer a place for himself and a less-threatening rival in the final heat.
However, sources close to both Cleverly and Jenrick have denied that such tactical voting had taken place.
A survey of Tory members by the ConservativeHome website last week suggested that Badenoch had the lead, by 55% to 31%.
Perhaps the first time Badenoch came to the attention of many in Ireland was in February when her then-Department pulled funding for Irish-language rap trio Kneecap.
Kneecap said its application to the scheme was “approved and signed off” by an independent selection board, but later “blocked directly” by the British government.
Their application was for the Music Export Growth Scheme, in which 67 artists received funding totalling £1.6 million.
The scheme is part-funded by the UK’s Department for Business and Trade and at the time, Badenoch was the UK Minister for Business and Trade.
In a statement to The Journal in February, a spokesperson for Badenoch said:
We fully support freedom of speech, but it’s hardly surprising that we don’t want to hand out UK taxpayers’ money to people that oppose the United Kingdom itself.
A day later, Kneecap launched a legal challenge against the British government decision to block them from the scheme.
Belfast-based Phoenix Law took on the case, acting alongside Derry GAA legend and barrister Joe Brolly – the case is due to be heard on 14 November.
Meanwhile, Badenoch has been described by UK media as “anti-woke” and has pledged to “always fight against left-wing nonsense”.
During her ministerial career, Badenoch clashed with civil servants over her insistence public buildings should have separate men’s and women’s toilet facilities and faced accusations of bullying her own officials.
She has also called for a “hard-nosed” policy on immigration and used a Telegraph article to say that not all cultures are “equally valid”.
“We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not,” said Badenoch.
Robert Jenrick meanwhile claimed this week that former British colonies owe a “debt of gratitude” and should be thanking Britain for the legacy of the empire – not asking for slavery reparations.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Jenrick said that while Britain should be honest about the crimes of colonialism, “we should be proud of its achievements”.
The British Empire broke the long chain of violent tyranny as we came to introduce – gradually and imperfectly – Christian values.
He also attracted some controversy recently when he said he “would be voting for Donald Trump” if he were an American citizen.
Asked about this on Sky News, Jenrick said: “Ultimately, it’s a decision for the people of the United States.
“And if I was lucky enough to lead our party, I would work well, I hope constructively, with whoever is president of the US.”
And earlier this year, he said a future Tory Government must be ready to rip up the Windsor Framework and “take back full control”.
The framework created a red and green lane system to minimise checks on goods coming from Britain to Northern Ireland, which are not intended for further travel into the EU.
“It isn’t good enough that Northern Ireland is in limbo, deprived of many of our new freedoms, or that British governments cannot make reforms without widening the gap between us,” wrote Jenrick in the Telegraph.
No self-respecting country would tolerate this indefinitely. So the Windsor Framework cannot last.
He’s also called for every entry point to the UK to feature a Star of David as a “symbol that we support Israel” and has vowed to move the British Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem if he were to become British prime minister.
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