No Kemi and Bobby are not hard right, but they need to be more punk

We need to be warned that Jenrick and Badenoch - let’s be really punk and call them Bobby and Kemi - are going to spit in the street, have long hair, trash hotel rooms and generally set a bad example.

On occasion I have witnessed, indeed may have taken part in, a discussion as to whether a given band plays hard rock, heavy rock, heavy metal or some other combination of these words. Perhaps with the addition of other defining terms - punk, goth, prog, classic and so forth. This innocent pastime has no bearing on the music itself but fulfils the desire of geeks and nerds to categorise the things they enjoy. In the end it doesn’t matter whether Slayer or Black Sabbath are heavy rock, hard rock or heavy metal (I assume fans of other music genres have these same discussions but I am less emotionally invested in jazz, hip-hop or reggae so do not know the terms). It keeps us happy I guess.

There was a time when distinctions in politics weren’t subject to the obsession with putting everything into a convenient nerd box. But no longer, at least amongst the world of centrist (or, in truth, slightly left wing) podcasting and punditry. There’s a requirement now for these self-appointed arbiters of political taste to describe people to their political right in similar terms to rock music - hard right, old right, new right, far right and, for all I know, heavy right, goth right and punk right.

“There’s a point at which the conservative life is a rebellion. Not merely O’Rourke’s rebellion against being told what to do by bossy people who mostly vote Democrat but a challenge to the “...progressive cultural milieu…” and the endless promotion of a libertine lifestyle as the norm. When we see smart and well-educated people telling us that we need to ‘normalise’ fetishes, it should dawn on us that the radical, the punk, choice for the well-educated urbanite is to be a conservative.”

The UK’s Conservative Party is embarking on the final stage of an epic, multi-volume search for a new leader. This last book sees two candidates placed, blinking in the sunlight of the real world, before that nation as the Party’s members get a say over which of the two they fancy as their next leader. The choice is between Robert Jenrick, a pretty orthodox conservative in the Thatcher/Reagan tradition, and Kemi Badenoch, a similarly orthodox conservative from the old tradition of social conservatism.  Yet, because the candidate the slightly leftist great and good saw as the ‘Good Tory” didn’t make the final showdown, the message is that the party’s MPs have somehow lost the plot.

“The choice is between a leader who is embracing a traditional populist right/hard right policy agenda (Jenrick) or one who does much the same thing but with more alt-right online discourse thrown in.”

I should, were I so invested in political boxes, now place Lewis Goodall (whose words these are) inside a tidy political box - hard centre, radical centre, elitist left, perhaps alt-centre - but this simply indulges the teenage nerdery that is represented by Goodall’s characterisation. Truth be told neither Jenrick or Badenoch is especially right wing but, for people like Goodall, the candidates concerns about immigration and ‘woke’ are defining of their various subcategories of being right wing. For people like Goodall the idea that a nation should control its borders is something only the hard- or far-right would support. The same applies, for these folk, to concerns about female spaces, to the view that all cultures are not equal and to the idea that people who choose to come to our nation should integrate into our culture and respect our traditions.

Goodall’s use of the term ‘hard right’ is intended pejoratively. By appending hard- or far- or alt- to the term right, the intention is to create - just as with hard, heavy, or punk rock - an impression of danger, of a threat to the tidy, ordered and sensible world that podcasting news pundits inhabit. Jenrick and Badenoch, in the minds of centrist pundits, have donned leathers, bitten the heads off chickens and turned the volume up to eleven. These are definitely people that the centrist dad will warn his online children about. We need to be warned that Jenrick and Badenoch - let’s be really punk and call them Bobby and Kemi - are going to spit in the street, have long hair, trash hotel rooms and generally set a bad example. By saying ‘maybe we need to reduce levels of immigration?’ and ‘perhaps women should be able to go to the loo without men barging in?’.

When the kids debating rock music are asked to define their terms the response is to point at someone and say ‘there you are’. So heavy rock is Slayer, heavy metal is Megadeath, and hard rock is Judas Priest (no I am not debating these definitions). The same goes for those defining hard- and far-right. Instead of considering policy platforms or even language, the response is to point at some or other politician and say “them, there, that’s far right” or “him over there, he’s hard right”. This results in the ridiculous idea that Boris Johnson was right wing:

“Boris Johnson has named the most right-wing cabinet for decades as he seeks to fulfil his pledge to deliver Brexit by 31 October with or without a deal with the EU.”

In this case the definition of ‘right-wing’ is, rather than wanting to reduce immigration or protect women’s spaces, the view that since the public voted to leave the European Union we should probably do just that. But for the self-important centre-left, the very definition of far- or hard-right is doing things that the majority of the public support (but that self-important centre-left people don’t). Indeed this really is what is meant by hard right, hence the term ‘populist-right’: proposing policies that are unpopular with the clique of political pundits in London but ragingly popular with the public at large.

Punk rock and heavy metal kicked the crutches away from comfortable, dull and conformist rock music played by people with good backgrounds who learned to play their instruments properly at a nice school. Politics probably needs the same. Not because everything proposed by the political equivalent of Pink Floyd or Coldplay is bad but because the political culture, across Europe and America, has become stagnant, predictable, too damned sensible for its own good. And this means that the economic and social challenges facing us are ignored in favour of primary school breakfast clubs, LGBTQ+ flags on hospitals, and holding up signs saying ‘refugees welcome’.

We have a stagnant economy, an entitlement culture we can’t afford, an immigration system that feels out of control, and obsessions with ‘anti-racism’ and ‘trans rights’ that simply create division. For ordinary families the rent is too damned high, the food bill has risen, and energy prices are through the roof, yet all the politicians and bureaucrats seem to care about is whether we’ve used the right pronouns, dumped plastic straws or signed up to the climate emergency. The idea that we should reposition the priorities of government to match the priorities of the public is what people like Lewis Goodall mean by hard-right and the result is that we don’t talk about vested interests, rent seeking and state entitlements we can’t afford. 

Jenrick and Badenoch are not hard-, far-, alt- or populist- right, they are simply mainstream conservatives who have directed people’s gaze to important issues such as immigration, housing and our cultural lives. You don’t have to agree with all they say (I don’t) to realise that this debate is necessary and urgent. Our problem is that too much of the political agenda isn’t set by the needs, wants and expectations of the public but by the dinner party prattle and ex-twitter accounts of the London great and good.