by Rachel Stewart

I’ve got a bit a thing for strong leaders.

By “strong’ I mean that they are prepared to say the unsayable, they generally see the way of things earlier than most, and they take risks for speaking up about divisive issues. But the true common denominator is moral clarity. Something we need a lot more of from our elected ruling classes if democracy has any chance of surviving, and at this juncture that subject is definitely debateable.

In 2026 the term ‘strong leadership’ is generally a misnomer. We see the Keir Starmers, Anthony Albaneses and Christopher Luxons everywhere. They may as well be mass-produced cardboard cut-outs for all the vision and backbone they embody.

But then there’s Kemi Badenoch. As leader of Britain’s Conservative Party she represents a massive change from her predecessors. She is 46, black, and spent her childhood in Nigeria and intimately knows how Muslims think and act. She often says that her upbringing in Nigeria gave her the tools to be able to spot toxic, radical Islamism and also made her unafraid to speak up against it.

She’s been making headlines over the last week for her unequivocal and clear-eyed support for Britain’s Jewish community in a way that takes nothing away from Muslims, while managing to call antisemitism a “national emergency” – which in Britain it most definitely is.

Here she is calling for a moratorium on those weekly pro-Palestine marches.

So, of course, then the usual media suspects tried their whataboutery on her.

And the once-beloved BBC – now basically just a mouthpiece for Islam and transgenderism – tries to take her to task over her call for a moratorium on the Palestine marches and she eats the interviewer Nick Robinson for breakfast using clarity and sanity.

And here’s another. Try this one on for size and try and tell me that Kemi doesn’t run rings around the interviewer.

Kemi Badenoch knows what most of us with a functioning brain know. That these marches and the slogans they use are a cover for something far more sinister than caring about Palestine’s fate. They are designed to normalise antisemitism.

She also mentions Zack Polanski, the Greens’ leader over there. And just like NZ’s co-leader Chloe Swarbrick and her crazy cabal, the Greens globally are complicit in the murder of Jews simply for being Jewish. Anybody politician who screams ‘Globalise the Intifada’ knows exactly what they’re doing. Let’s never forget that.

Zack Polanski is also the guy that says he was “traumatised” by footage of police detaining the Golders Green terror-suspect. Nothing about the state of the victims he stabbed.

Here she is doing a press stand-up after the stabbing of those very Jewish people in Golders Green. Tell me what’s not to like about how she handles this.

We are living in age where anybody speaking up for Jews and reminding people of the multitude of historical horrors done to them, is actually engaging in a radical act. That’s just us laypeople.

When the Leader of the Opposition in Britain does it she needs even more security and bodyguards than she already has, and a healthy bump in the polls.

I’ve got a feeling both of those things are about to happen.

Listen to the full episode of Riding Shotgun.