Online ‘ethno-nationalism’ on rise in UK, Kemi Badenoch says

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Kemi Badenoch, Conservative party leader, has claimed that there has been a rise in online “ethno-nationalism” in Britain and that she has been the target of “hysterical” personal attacks.

Badenoch declared at the Tory conference in 2023 that Britain was “the best country in the world to be Black”, but on Sunday said she had suffered abuse because of her ethnicity.

Her comments came against a backdrop of a heated political debate on immigration, with rightwing groups participating in protests against the use of hostels to house asylum seekers.

Badenoch, born in Britain to Nigerian parents, told the Sunday Times newspaper that some critics had used racial “tropes” to denounce her leadership of the Conservative party.

“There’s a certain cadre of people who clearly can’t cope with the fact that I won this and I’m doing it,” she said. “The level of personal attacks from anonymous people, it’s hysterical.

She said that on social media “there’s a lot of ethno-nationalism creeping up, lots of stuff about my race and my ethnicity and the tropes around, ‘Well, she couldn’t possibly have done this all by herself’.”

She added: “They will try and use the tropes about black people — that they’re lazy, they’re corrupt or they’re all DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] hires — and it’s something which I find extraordinary because I take everyone at face value.”

Badenoch faces an uphill struggle when MPs return from their summer break on September 1, with her party trailing far behind Reform UK and speculation swirling around her leadership.

The latest YouGov survey gave Nigel Farage’s rightwing populist party 28 per cent, with Labour on 21 per cent and the Conservatives on 18 per cent, while Badenoch is braced for a very tough set of local elections across the UK next year.

The Tory conference in Manchester in October will be a crucial moment for Badenoch, as she attempts to assert her authority over a party where talk is already rife about who might succeed her.

Badenoch said some supporters of Robert Jenrick, shadow justice secretary, had not come to terms with the fact that she had beaten him in the party’s leadership contest last year.

“There will always be people who are sore losers, our candidate didn’t win and so on, and sour grapes,” she said. “When I hear those things, I can tell those people are not focused on the country at all. Many of those people having those conversations think this is a game. But the lives of people in this country aren’t a game.”

She said she did not blame Jenrick, whose active presence on social media and campaigns against irregular migration and crime have convinced many Tories that he is still campaigning for the party leadership.

“I think even Rob himself finds it distressing, but it’s just something that we deal with,” Badenoch said.