Timing is everything in politics. So when the leader of the opposition realised she was due to be making a speech heaping praise on Donald Trump, just as the president plunged her own country into a national security crisis, you might think even she would have hesitated.
But seemingly nothing can keep Kemi Badenoch from a culture war, not even the threat of an actual war. So, at a rightwing conference in London on Monday morning, she duly ripped into corporate diversity policies, climate activism, Keir Starmer taking the knee four and a half years ago, and various other imagined threats to western civilisation that are not forcing Britain to consider deploying troops against them, before concluding triumphantly that when people ask her what difference a change of leader makes, her answer is, “Take a look at President Trump.”
Those words should be replayed over and over again for as long as Badenoch remains leader of the opposition, which at this rate may not be very long. For once, it’s not just the liberal left who are looking at Trump and recoiling in horror. Ukrainian sovereignty was a cause unusually close to rightwing hearts, too: Reform UK’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, was torn apart by TalkTV’s uber-Brexiter Julia Hartley-Brewer for attempting to defend Trump’s shameful betrayal of Ukraine, in an encounter that went viral on X. “Which part of Britain would you give away if we were invaded?” demanded Hartley-Brewer, before scoffing: “I just thought Reform cared about national borders and sovereignty.”
The former Telegraph editor and Margaret Thatcher biographer Charles Moore, a frequent visitor to Kyiv, thundered that Trump’s withdrawal was a “disaster for security”, leaving Putin free to exert deadly dominance in Europe: “Even Stalin never won that much.” There is a strain of the old British right for whom patriotism still means more than ranting about immigration, and when Moore is singing from the same hymn sheet as John Major – who warned of a direct threat to western democracy – it’s a sign they have woken up.
Even Boris Johnson, who may or may not be considering a political comeback, half-rose to the occasion by telling GB News that Ukraine’s path to Nato membership must remain open, while former defence ministers are sounding loud alarm bells over the exclusion of Ukraine from talks about its future.
And if you would rather rip your ears off than listen to any of these people – well, it’s not you who will determine how big Reform grows or whether it can essentially do to the Conservative party what Trump did to the Republicans; this time, it’s an audience that does take its lead from TalkTV and GB News that is in the driving seat. If Britain is to build an effective firewall against the madness currently sweeping the US and parts of Europe, then what the British right does – how far it chooses to hold the line against the extremists in its midst – matters enormously. Having to defend either the White House or the Kremlin line over the shameful betrayal of Ukraine is kryptonite to Reform, a rare issue where it is uncomfortably out of step with British public opinion on an issue that will profoundly shape the next few years, and it should be made to own it.
Existing Reform voters are by far the most pro Trump of any party, with 54% saying they were happy to see him elected in November compared with 16% of voters overall, according to YouGov. But it is what’s left of the Conservative vote Nigel Farage needs to win over – and only 20% were happy to see this particular Republican in the White House even before it became clear exactly what he was going to do.
Being painted as a Putin apologist, meanwhile, is, if anything, even more electorally toxic than being pro Trump: just ask any Labour MP forced to defend Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of the Salisbury poisonings to angry constituents. Though war fatigue has crept in lately, with 32% of Britons favouring a negotiated settlement in Ukraine rather than fighting until the Russians withdraw, that’s still a minority view; and fewer still will want to see the Ukrainians come out of that settlement badly, as Farage himself acknowledged last week by suggesting Nato membership should remain on the table for them.
So Labour should have no qualms whatsoever about punching that bruise, reminding its Reform-curious voters that Farage once named Putin as the world leader he most admires. Do they really want him anywhere near the levers of power, at a time when British troops will potentially soon be in harm’s way along a new frontline with Russia? And if any of Trump’s threatened trade tariffs come to pass, and start costing jobs in what is left of UK manufacturing industries, his British cheerleaders should be made to own that too.
But it can’t just be Labour that holds the Trumpian right accountable, which is what makes Badenoch’s morning of mud-wrestling with Farage (due to speak at the same conference she was addressing) so ill judged. This wasn’t the week to go grubbing for support from Trumpworld, but to stand well back and watch Reform MPs squirm on the hook they made for themselves.
For there is no such thing as a free lunch, even at Mar-a-Lago: being part of the court of Trump means sooner or later feeling obliged to defend the indefensible, which inevitably comes at a price back home. For all those on the British right who have basked in his favour, let this be a moment of reckoning.