Kemi Badenoch: Why I chose champions of Conservatism to join the House of Lords

Kemi Badenoch is leader of the Conservative Party

Not that long ago, our opponents were desperate to write us off, claiming we had run out of money and were about to lose CCHQ.

Last week’s record fundraising and the purchase of a new £14 million headquarters show that reports of the Conservative Party’s death were in fact, greatly exaggerated.

Under my leadership, the Conservative Party is rebuilding for the long term.  From the grassroots of our party all the way up to our headquarters.

However, the real test of our renewal is not the buildings we work from, it is who we are and who we stand for. The three people we are sending into the Lords this week show exactly the kind of Conservatives Britain now needs.

I have nominated some of the most resilient and powerful champions of Conservative values.

John Redwood has been a guiding force on Conservative economic policy and, a Thatcherite stalwart for nearly half a century.  He has flown the flag for fiscal conservatism longer and more forcefully than almost anyone in our party’s history, and continued to do so even during times the party veered off course.

Before every Budget, the Treasury receives a stream of visits from MPs keen to press the case for constituency project funding or causes close to their hearts. John has long been known as the only MP who turned up with list of government efficiencies he had worked up instead.

Sharron Davies is a formidable campaigner for women’s rights, often at huge cost to herself and her career. A former Olympic swimmer and BBC presenter, she was one of the first women to speak up about the unfairness of biological men competing in female sport. Her strength and resolve moved the dial on gender ideology in women’s sports and I am incredibly proud to have supported her when I was a minister.

Simon Heffer is not just one of the leading Conservative voices in British journalism, he is also one of our finest historians of modern Britain, whose life’s work has been to defend our history, our constitution and the values that built this country – exactly the qualities we need in the Lords.

These appointments share one thing in common.

They are brave, principled Conservatives who have done real work standing up for our party’s values. Each of them has the courage and willingness to fight cultural and constitutional battles. And we are going to need them.

Labour’s appointments tell a different story.

They have opted instead for a litany of party cronies, ex-advisers and London-based councillors, because all they are thinking about is Parliamentary mathematics. Unlike us, they are stuffing the Lords with people they can control and who will vote as they are told.  And this is a terrifying prospect.

In an unprecedented move,  they have awarded the Official Opposition only 3 peerages this year, to Labour’s 25 and the Liberal Democrats’ 5.

Typically we would get a larger allocation.

The decision to give the third party so many peerages is interesting.

It is no surprise that the Liberal Democrats are now consistently voting with the Government in the Lords? Including on Angela Rayer’s job killing Employment Rights Bill on Wednesday night.

Our upper chamber is there to act as a backstop to a government making bad legislation or reneging on its promises to the British people.

While I’m angry about the economic vandalism this Labour Government is inflicting on our country, at least we can fix it. Far more worrying, is the irreversible damage they are doing to this country’s long-standing moral underpinnings.

Assisted dying. Legalising abortion up to full term. Getting rid of most juries. None of these were in the Labour Party’s manifesto, and yet in their first year in office they have tried to ram all of them through Parliament.

These are the kinds of things the House of Lords is there to scrutinise.  To hit the brakes on and force ministers to think again.

But Labour don’t want scrutiny or delay. They know they’re only going to be in office for one term, so they are rushing to turn the House of Lords into a left-wing chamber and remove the last line of defence from their Commons majority.

This includes their plan to abolish hereditary peers, almost all of whom are Conservatives as well as to shrink the number of our appointments.

Of course they will argue, that up until now the Conservatives have held the numbers in the House of Lords and this is simply redressing the balance. But over the last Parliament, the Conservative government was defeated time and again in Lords, because our Peers have their own mind and vote based on what they believe in. It isn’t always easy… but it makes for better legislation.

Real Conservatives stand for something.

They stick up for their values even when it’s hard or unpopular.  Our appointments are about renewing our party with fresh thinking rooted in our principles.  But they are also about the battle for the soul of the country in a fragmented political landscape.

We need a team full of courage, experience, and ideological clarity who will stand up for Conservative values no matter what.

That’s the team I’m building.