Kemi Badenoch says Britain isn’t broken – it’s just addicted
Britain is not a “broken” country. It’s trapped in a “toxic relationship” with big government that is sapping its vitality, stifling enterprise, and breeding dependency, says Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.
Writing in an op-ed in The Times, Badenoch delivered a sharp rebuke to the prevailing narrative of national decline.
“People are working harder, paying taxes, yet see decaying public services and disorder in the streets,” Badenoch writes. “To some, this is proof that Britain is broken. This isn’t a broken country. It’s an extraordinary one, saddled with failing big government.”
Her message comes at a time when the Tories are attempting to reposition themselves amid a fragmented right-wing landscape. Recent polling shows the Conservatives are competitive with Labour, though still trailing Reform UK in some surveys.
Badenoch herself tops certain Conservative leadership preference metrics internally, even as broader public views of her premiership prospects remain cautious.
Badenoch framed the UK’s challenges not as evidence of inherent national failure, but as the predictable fallout from decades of over-reliance on state intervention.
Citizens grind away, funding an ever-larger bureaucracy, only to watch services crumble and streets grow less orderly. Politicians on both the left and parts of the right, she singled out Labour and Reform, respond with the same reflex. More welfare, more nationalisation, more spending, and inevitably more taxes.
“It’s what did for the Conservatives in government: we failed to place enough trust in the courage and character of the British public,” she said. “That is what we need to do now.”
An addiction
BAdenoch argues that governments create problems through regulation and tax hikes such as higher costs for hiring young workers via elevated minimum wages, red tape, and employment rules. Then offer subsidies or schemes to “fix” the damage they inflicted.
She recounts a young graduate on an LBC phone-in who struggled to find work and, after grasping the policy roots of the issue, still urged more government support.
At a Norfolk business roundtable, employers dismissed a new youth hiring scheme not out of indifference, but because the bureaucratic burden made it impractical.
This cycle, Badenoch warns, erodes something deeper than GDP figures: national character.
“The risk is a culture in which people stop asking: ‘Can I do this?’ and start asking: ‘Why hasn’t the government done it for me yet?’ That doesn’t just make our country poorer. It makes us feel smaller. Less confident. Less resilient.”
Labour and Reform, in her view, see citizens as fragile, selfish, or incompetent – requiring constant state direction. Badenoch offers a more optimistic assessment. Britain, she says, is defined by its “capable, decent, resourceful people.”
It is a nation where “dreams come true – the British dream,” marked by ingenuity, creativity, a sense of humour, pride in traditions, and openness to the future.
She contrasts this with the statist approach that treats government as the default solution to every problem.
“Britain did not become great because government sat at the centre of everything, issuing guidance notes and demanding impact assessments. It became great because free people were trusted to think, build, trade, discover and organise.”
