Give Kemi time – her plan is starting to work
Worse still, some Tories are already gunning for the Leader of the Opposition after just 100 days in office. They must be mad to do so. Do these social media flibbertigibbets lack an attention span long enough to grasp that it was precisely this kind of behaviour that caused the party to be keelhauled at the last election?
None of this would have surprised Margaret Thatcher, who deposed Ted Heath as Tory leader fifty years ago this week. She, too, was accused of being flat-footed at the despatch box, of getting the tone wrong and being outmaneuvered by the Labour PMs Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan.
Yet Mrs T took no notice of the 'naysayers' or the 'moaning minnies', as she called them. Nor will Mrs B, who is made of the same stuff as the Iron Lady.
For the truth is that, largely unremarked by a mainly hostile media, Kemi is making rapid progress in the monumental task that she has set herself. For the first time in two generations, this leader is not chasing ephemeral soundbites, but is rethinking the foundations of Conservatism. To this end she has assembled the broadest-based Shadow Cabinet possible and enlisted some of the brightest minds in the kingdom.
She has elevated to the Lords the former Oxford Regius Professor Nigel Biggar, champion of academic freedom and scourge of those who would pervert the course of history. Joining him on the red benches is Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union and defender of all those cancelled for standing up to wokish bullying.
Mrs Thatcher was an Oxford-trained chemist who learnt early on that one must trust evidence, not authority. Her family had taken in a Jewish refugee from the Nazis. Like her, Kemi Badenoch knows exactly what it is like to be intimidated by a monolithic state. Under a military dictatorship in Nigeria, where this British-born computer scientist grew up, life was ruled by fear.
As leader, Kemi has refused to let herself be rushed on policy. But she has struck the right, tough-minded note on the biggest issue of the day: immigration. She knows that Nigel Farage is snapping at her heels, but Reform has nothing but negativity to offer. Meanwhile, Labour's laughably named Border Security Bill will actually make it easier for illegal migrants to stay in the UK.
By contrast, Kemi will step up the pressure on the Government this week by calling for a radical reform of the period required for Indefinite Leave to Remain. It should be ten years, not five, she says, and the conditions should be much stricter. Migrants should have to prove that their household is a net contributor and that they have no criminal record.
'Our country is not a dormitory,' she declares. 'It's our home.' As someone who first met Kemi soon after she became an MP eight years ago, I can say with confidence that she is one of the most patriotic people I know.
She loves this country with a passion that is as infectious as it has been absent from our politics for years. It is impossible to imagine Mrs Badenoch paying an enormous bribe to a Chinese satellite to take over a British territory such as the Chagos Islands.
Mrs B, like Mrs T before her, is the kind of leader who emerges once in a generation. Ignore the polls: no general election is in prospect. Kemi's mood music may not yet be to everybody's taste, but in three or four years' time it will have built up to an almighty crescendo. A land of hope and glory? Under Kemi – and only her – it's credible.
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20 years after its landmark withdrawal from Gaza, Israel is mired there
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There were short but destructive conflicts over the years between the two sides, but otherwise the policy gave Hamas 'an opportunity to do whatever they wanted.' 'We had such a blind spot with Hamas, we didn't see them morph from a terror organization into an organized military, with battalions and commanders and infrastructure,' he said. The Oct. 7 attack, Israel's largest military intelligence failure to date, was not a result of the disengagement, said Harel. 'The main issue is what we did in the 18 years in between.'
