For centuries, Britain was ruled by an aristocracy. In recent decades, however, this concept has become rather passé, and we have been doing away with it — most recently with the vote to abolish hereditary peers in the House of Lords.
Yet, as the old guard fades, a new elite has taken its place. Inherited traits — particularly skin colour and sex — now grant special dispensations. Utterances that would be unthinkable for most are allowed, and positions incommensurate to talent are dispensed.
This is because the new aristocracy is flush, often through little toil of its own, with moral authority — a valuable currency wielded by what we might call the Patricians of Victimhood.
Their power rests on the idea that Britain is a fundamentally racist country, brimming with other nasty “isms” that can be contained only by them. To deny this is heresy — but to disprove it is a crime for which no punishment is too great.
This was evident when Kemi Badenoch, a black woman, was elected Saturday to lead the Conservative Party. This historic first for Britain might have been expected to please those preoccupied with combating racism, perhaps even chalked up as a win.
Instead, Badenoch was lambasted by politicians who have built careers campaigning about racism. Dawn Butler, a Labour MP, shared a post accusing Badenoch of representing “white supremacy in blackface” — an insult so improbable that it conjures only an image of a face-painted Justin Trudeau.
The post, now removed from Butler’s X account, read: “Today the most prominent member of white supremacy’s black collaborator class (in Britain) is likely to be made leader of the Conservative Party. Here are some handy tips for surviving the immediate surge of Badenochism (i.e. white supremacy in blackface).”
Another Labour MP, Zara Sultana, said Badenoch was “one of the most nasty & divisive figures in British politics,” for, among other things, “downplaying racism.”
Badenoch is opposed to identity politics. She believes in meritocracy and that Britain — as she told her children recently — “is the best country in the world to be black.” Badenoch’s optimism is well founded: a 2023 World Values Survey found that Britain is indeed one of the least racist countries in the world.
Yet, many on the Left — including Butler and Sultana — not only take a different view, but also rely on others following their lead; when minorities feel aggrieved, there is more demand for their brand of race-obsessed politics. And as “women of colour,” they can demand illustrious career opportunities in the name of “equal representation,” and are granted tremendous leeway in how they conduct themselves.
Had a white man implied, as Butler did, that a colleague’s politics made them a race traitor, they would be forced to resign and plausibly carted off by the police. Yet, Butler has retained the party whip; showing she inhabits a parallel system of ethics and justice to the rest of us.
This alone is not conducive to healthy race relations. But it is especially egregious as it provides cover for genuine racism. There are few ideas more poisonous than that one’s politics should be determined by their skin colour — an idea which could be grounds for legitimate prejudice. Yet this is exactly what is being peddled by Butler and others throughout the English-speaking world.
Two senior Tory politicians, Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman, have both been denounced as “coconuts” for their politics; Kanye West was labelled an “Uncle Tom” for supporting Donald Trump; Morgan Freeman was lampooned in a similar vein for rejecting the notion of Black History Month.
That minorities who hold the “wrong” opinions are regularly impugned in this way gives the lie to the idea that the Patricians of Victimhood are interested in seeing them succeed. It suggests they are primarily interested in minorities as a monolith — for which they are the spokespeople — not as individuals, with a range of sympathies and views.
This worldview seeks to put certain groups “under house arrest in their skins,” as the philosopher Pascal Bruckner wrote, saddling them with a prescribed view of their history and place in society. Those who advocate it are therefore friends not of the oppressed, but of oppression.
Michael Murphy is a journalist based in London. He writes for the Daily Telegraph and presented the documentary ‘Ireland is full! Anti-immigration backlash in Ireland’. You can follow him on X: @michaelmurph_y.