Kemi Badenoch blames mob mentality for rising antisemitism

Tribalism and trust in national institutions were among the themes explored on the distinctly political first day of the Cliveden Literary Festival. 

The Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch spoke about growing up without the rule of law, under military dictatorship in Nigeria. “I saw real lynch mobs,” she said. “I saw people killed.”  

During a discussion with the author and festival co-founder Simon Sebag Montefiore in a tent in the grounds of the stately home in Buckinghamshire, she likened the cancel culture that we see in the west today to those lynchings. “Someone says something, everybody joins in. The person, sometimes innocent, says, ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’ They start begging, but people join in, and you can never actually pinpoint who has committed the crime. It’s a group activity.” 

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Politicians in the UK, as well as in Europe and the US, are terrified of the mob, she said. “Those ‘free Palestine’ activists harass Labour MPs – even the ones who agree with them – they push into more and more extremism.” For Labour to have a “symbolic spat with Israel just to manage your party won’t end well”, she said, describing Israel as one of the UK’s most important security partners. 

When the historian and former US antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt asked Badenoch from the audience about the rise in Jew hatred, Badenoch attributed it to humans’ innate tribalism. We were now “retreating more and more into tribes”, she said, and hateful views were not getting challenged from within those tribes, leading to ever more violence toward the other. 

Later in the day, the journalist Emily Maitlis displayed her outstanding skill as chair at a sometimes heated panel titled State of the Nation that included the Labour MP Jess Phillips, the academic and Reform member Matt Goodwin, Labour peer Maurice Glasman and the Conservatives Alex Burghart MP and Baroness (Joanne) Cash. In keeping with the literary setting, each panellist sat beside the cover of one of their own books on politics. 

Illegal migration was one of the main topics. Lord Glasman, sitting beside a copy of Blue Labour: the Politics of the Common Good, said: “Small boats has become an incredible, significant thing at every level, national security, cohesion, faith in the state. Because if the state can’t protect its borders, we are losing our capacity to govern ourselves and faith in the governing of ourselves.” 

Earlier, Glasman mentioned that he had recently returned from Berlin, and had been there on the anniversary of 7 October. On that day, in the centre of the city, “there was a rally of the Die Linke party, essentially the Green Party, sort of Islamists and Corbynite nutcases”, and they were walking through Berlin shouting “death to the Jews” . He went on to predict that the AfD would be the largest party at the next election and that Marine Le Pen would win in France.

A bit like an upper-class, mixed-faith Limmud, though without the prayer or the hechshers, Cliveden has tempting sessions running in parallel throughout the day, alongside a very well-stocked bookshop.