MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
A different election will happen this weekend across the Atlantic. Members of Britain's Conservative Party will elect a new member. Whoever wins will be tasked with rebuilding the political party of Churchill and Thatcher after its worst-ever election defeat. NPR's Lauren Frayer reports from London.
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LAURA KUENSSBERG: And as Big Ben strikes 10, a Labour landslide.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Blimey. The Conservative Party looks pulverized tonight.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Britain's conservatives were pulverized at the polls this summer despite dominating politics here for more than a century. Robert Lord Hayward, a conservative member of the House of Lords, says the way his party is now trying to rebuild is by playing to the extremes.
ROBERT LORD HAYWARD: A certain element of the British population is watching what's happening in the United States. You can't avoid it.
FRAYER: He says moderates have been voted out of this leadership contest by fellow MPs, and the last two candidates standing...
HAYWARD: They're not actually household names in the United Kingdom, which is why they've gone for a populist approach - to attract the headlines.
FRAYER: Politicians on this side of the Atlantic are also diving into culture wars by saying stuff like this.
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KEMI BADENOCH: Of course, not all cultures are equally valid. I don't believe in cultural relativism. I believe in Western values.
FRAYER: That's Kemi Badenoch, the front-runner to lead the U.K. Conservative Party, arguing on TV that immigrants from certain cultures should be more welcome here than others. She's also said she thinks paid maternity leave is, quote, "excessive" and that, while her parents are wealthy, she herself is working class because she worked a fast food job as a teenager.
KATY BALLS: Now, lots of Brits quickly made fun of her, saying, you can't just be working class because you had a job at McDonalds.
FRAYER: Katy Balls is political editor of The Spectator, a right-leaning magazine here. She says Badenoch...
BALLS: She is very much known for talking about identity politics. She's sometimes depicted as the anti-woke warrior.
FRAYER: And some see that as an unlikely role for Badenoch. She's a Black woman and a mother of three who grew up in Nigeria.
BALLS: And people listen to her in the way, if it was a man, they may not have done.
FRAYER: Badenoch would make history as the first Black leader of any major U.K. party. Her challenger, fellow MP Robert Jenrick, is most famous for quitting a cabinet post over a proposal to deport migrants to Rwanda in Africa.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: ...Has called it moral delinquency. And the Times reported that Prince Charles privately called the plan appalling.
FRAYER: The Rwanda plan was panned by human rights groups and overturned by the courts. But for Jenrick, it wasn't tough enough. He's also called for peaceful protesters to be arrested if they chant Allahu akbar, God is great, at pro-Palestinian rallies. And he told a pro-Israel group that he wants the Star of David posted at U.K. borders.
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ROBERT JENRICK: ...So that at every airport and point of entry to our great country, there is the Star of David there as a symbol that we support Israel. We stand with Israel. We are friends and allies.
FRAYER: Now, some of these views might not seem out of place in U.S. political discourse these days. Others are pretty unconventional, even fringe. But after losing votes this summer to a far-right, anti-immigrant party, the staid old party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher may be taking a page from the GOP playbook and making a tactical shift. Tomorrow we'll learn who its next leader is and how much the party might change under them. Lauren Frayer, NPR News, London.
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