Kemi Badenoch’s speech: "It's time for realism"

Today [Tuesday 25^th February 2025] Kemi Badenoch MP, Leader of the Conservative Party, delivered a speech on our national security.  

In her speech, Kemi Badenoch said: 

Checked against delivery

“Every few decades, the world changes. The Iron Curtain descending. The fall of the Berlin Wall. September 11th. The invasion of Ukraine.

Today, we must be realistic and accept we are in another era of change: a reappraisal of how nation states interact, how much focus we must place on our defence, and how geo-politics works. 

At the very least, the ‘Pax Americana' of half a century is evolving, potentially even ending. We may be witnessing a more fundamental reset.   Perhaps a return to the world of the strong and the weak. And in such a world, we must not be weak.

Our foreign policy should seek to support our national interest.

We should review those alliances, methods and approaches which served us well for three generations.

Where they work, we should keep them, and where they do not, they should go.

The United Kingdom must accept reality. No one owes us a living.

No process is an end in itself. We can no longer hide behind vapid statements that were - at best - ambitious twenty years ago and are now today outright irrelevant.

It is time to speak the truth: the world has changed. And the UK is not ready.

So, we must change too.

The first thing we must define is our national interest.

We need a first principles approach that really recognises that a nation's primary purpose is to defend its borders, its values, and its people.

And, as important as other objectives may be, the blunt reality is that everything else must be secondary.

National interest means a strong military and a strong economy.

A recognition that if our supply chains are overly exposed to those who do not share our values, our country is at risk. 

That relying upon goodwill is a fool's errand.  That genuine, long-term prosperity is built from real competitive advantage, not vague aspirations. 

That peace is only obtained through strength. 

That others, even friends, will ultimately put themselves first. 

And, before the inevitable pearl clutching of those who wish it was still 1995, none of this is a selfish objective. 

We have lived off the inheritance of Thatcher, Reagan and Gorbachev for too long. 

The world has changed. And we now must be realistic. 

You simply cannot help others if you cannot help yourself.

Strengthening Britain must be the principal objective at the heart of everything we do.

That means not elevating internationalism or progressivism, above our own national interest.

When David Lammy talks about progressive realism, he is not serious.

Progressive realism is a contradiction.

It means not championing ever more expansive approaches to international law at the expense of British interests.

It means recognising that sovereignty matters, our sovereignty above all.

Secondly, we must stop being naive about international affairs.

Where partnerships or supranational institutions work for us and deliver in our national interest, we will support them.

As a trading nation we need to protect the rules that underpin global commerce. We should always prioritise closer trading relationships with open economies. 

As Trade Secretary, I signed the CPTPP trade deal because it was strategically as well as economically beneficial. Strengthening our links in the Indo-Pacific where there are concerns around China.

So, where international alliances strengthen our security, we must continue them. NATO remains vital for European defence. And we must pursue new avenues, like AUKUS, with our closest allies.

But we have let ourselves be fooled into believing that international law alone can keep the peace. That international agreements or institutions are somehow ends in and of themselves.

When faced with regimes with no respect for the law, we need more realism.

“International law” should not become a tool for NGOs, and other critics, to advance an activist political agenda through international bodies or our courts.

Just look at how the ECHR redefined climate protection as a human right or at the overreach in the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice and the ruling of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea on Chagos. Or, at the UN rapporteurs touring the world claiming that the West is racist and discriminatory – when we are clearly not. 

If international bodies are taken over by activists, or by autocratic regimes like China or Russia, we must use our influence to stop them, and if that fails, we will need to disengage.

The third thing we must do is get serious within our own nation.

We no longer have time for fripperies and inconsequentials.

We cannot waste effort on trivia such as declaring our pronouns or trying to redefine what a woman is.

We shouldn't apologise for our past, let alone be discussing paying reparations. Our leaders should not be taking the knee. Young people can no longer be taught to dislike our country, our institutions and our history so much that they say they wouldn't fight for it.

And before someone accuses me again of fighting culture wars this goes beyond personal interest.

Every single second that we spend on these matters is a second lost while our adversaries are advancing.

Fourthly, we must be realistic about our failures, so we stop repeating them.

Despite the loss of so many British lives, Afghanistan fell again to the Taliban.

We helped force Gaddafi from power in Libya, but a failed state was left behind.

We watched America set red lines for Assad in Syria and then watched as Assad crossed them.

Britain led the worlds and the West in support for Ukraine.

I will always be proud of the support the last Conservative Government gave in the run up to Putin's invasion. And, those first crucial weeks and months of the war.

We helped prevent Kyiv falling and supported Ukraine in regaining territory initially lost to Russia.

But it is also true that – overall – the West has not done enough to support Ukraine. 

We were too ineffective, too indecisive and too often behind the curve.

As a result, Putin gained what he needed most: time.

We now see the consequences.

An end to the war is being negotiated while a fifth of Ukrainian territory is under enemy occupation.

The danger is that aggression does not merely go unpunished but ends up rewarded. Russia and other authoritarian regimes will be emboldened if that is how this war ends.

And this is why it is absolutely critical that the Prime Minister succeeds in his talks with President Trump later this week.

Fifth, we should not hide behind warm slogans or warm words like “soft power” or an “ethical foreign policy”, as reasons for not promoting our national interest.

If Russia decides that – after Ukraine – it will try aggression against a NATO member. We will not be saved because of our membership of the International Criminal Court.

We need to take a cold, hard look at the agreements we have signed and ask ourselves whether they really serve our national interest today.

Yes, some were agreed in the aftermath of the last world war.

Others during the optimism at the end of the Cold War.

And yes, British jurists and diplomats were behind a lot of these developments.

But some of these arrangements have mutated out of all recognition.

Over the last twenty years the ECHR rulings morphed so fundamentally that they now limit our ability to control our borders or even fight in war. And as Dean said earlier, Policy Exchange have exposed over the last decade in work covering the ICC, lawfare against our armed forces, and the Labour Government's surrender of our territory in Chagos.

We cannot win a war against an opponent willing to break all the rules while we insist on playing by the most gentle of Queensbury rules.

This takes me to my sixth and final point. We must rebuild – and rebuild quickly. 

We need to increase defence expenditure significantly.

But this is about more than committing to spend a particular percentage of our GDP.

Of course, spend does matter and 2.5 per cent by 2030 was our funded commitment by the last Conservative government but it was a downpayment on more.

Keir Starmer cancelled our plan and set us back.

2.5 per cent by 2030 is now no longer sufficient.

We must rebuild and go further and faster.

Rebuilding will be achieved by having a plan to rearm based on an efficient, focused military, equipped with, and trained to use, the new kinds of weapons we have seen deployed to devastating effects in Ukraine.

We also need to be honest enough to admit that military procurement still needs a fundamental redesign to be faster, more responsive and to deliver better value for taxpayers.

The message should be simple: we must do what it takes to protect Britain.

That means not just our independent nuclear deterrent.

But also, the ability to protect our critical national infrastructure – at home and under the sea.

It means having the capability required to contribute meaningfully to NATO-led deterrence in Europe.

Alongside this, we need to make sure that we have the infrastructure to keep Britain strong. We cannot put virtue signalling ahead of a realistic assessment of our national interest. That means prioritising our Energy Security.

Building our domestic R&D capabilities in key technologies of the future such as un-crewed vehicles while learning the lessons of Ukraine that conventional, conventional ground strength still matters.

That means defending industries vital to our resilience – including arms manufacturing.

So, we should not be suspending arms licences to our allies on spurious political grounds.

This sends the worst possible signal to countries thinking of buying from our domestic defence industry.

If we approach this challenge of rebuilding as a zero-sum game – as a simple choice between defence spending and public services – we will struggle to persuade the public to back it.

There will be painful decisions for the government that would have been for any government.

Any country that spends more on debt interest than it does on defence, as the UK does today, is destined for weakness.

I will back the Prime Minister in taking difficult decisions to increase defence spending. For example, he should consider whether some of the 0.5 per cent currently spent on Development Aid should be repurposed – at least in the short term – towards defence and security.

And he should look at making welfare savings to fund increased defence expenditure.

But one decision shouldn't be difficult.

He should scrap his disastrous plan to surrender the Chagos islands and have British taxpayers pay for the privilege.

A key difference between the Prime Minister and I is that I know we need a strong economy so we can pay for defence.

We need a serious plan to get the British economy growing again.

All of this is connected.

We cannot rebuild or rearm while we are hounding businesses and farmers.

We need to restore business confidence reduce the red tape and taxation; we need to remove the disincentives to work from our welfare system.

The world has changed.

The familiar geopolitical architecture we grew up with is under threat. It's under threat from a new Axis of authoritarian powers – Russia, China, Iran and others.

If we fail to respond in the way I have described, we will face a bitter reckoning, sooner or later. 

Twenty years ago, Irving Kristol talked of a conservative being a liberal mugged by reality. 

And, on foreign policy, that is exactly what I have always been: a conservative. 

Not a liberal. 

Not a cosmopolitan internationalist.

Not a neo-con.

But a conservative realist.

I have spoken before about my core belief that we must fight for the Western values of liberalism, those enlightenment values need to be fought for.

The real, classical liberalism of free speech, free trade, free enterprise, and a smaller state that does some things well – like defence - rather than lots of things badly.

These are the Conservative values that I hold. That guide everything that I do.

And I believe the country our children will inherit will be stronger, if we reassert them.

For nearly two centuries, since Britain emerged from the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, the Conservative Party has stood for strong defence.

Defence of our national traditions of monarchy, faith, family, law and order, and individual liberty against every threat we have faced Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Al Qaeda, Islamic State – now Vladimir Putin.

But we Conservatives have always believed, and rightly, that the indispensable foundations of strong defence are a strong economy – and a confident society that believes in itself and its traditions, and that these are worth defending.

We cannot defend them without realism.”