Ben Obese-Jecty: 'There doesn’t seem to be a coherent, holistic view of defence'
8 min read
One of just 26 new Conservative MPs, Ben Obese-Jecty speaks to Sophie Church about Labour’s ‘duplicity’ and his reasons for wanting to tackle knife crime
“How many separate pledges do you think Labour made over the course of Keir Starmer’s leadership?”
New Conservative MP for Huntingdon Ben Obese-Jecty is quizzing The House on the extent of the promises Labour made to the public to secure power – promises he believes the party has mostly already broken.
He says, “574”, The House’s estimate falling far shorter. “I’ve listed them all out: they’re all linked to articles where various now-ministers have said they will do various things, all the documents they got removed from the website – there is absolutely everything there.”
I’m not here as a black politician. I’m just a Conservative MP
Some of these pledges did not appear in Labour’s manifesto and, in fairness, could be implemented later down the line. But Obese-Jecty says these signs of “duplicity” will “not have gone unnoticed by the general public”.
“When Keir Starmer took over as Labour leader, we saw the speed with which his 10 original pledges fell by the wayside. I think that probably should have started to ring alarm bells for many people as to how he conducts his politics.”
Obese-Jecty is determined to hold Labour’s feet to the fire on behalf of his constituents. “I’m massively keen to be well-liked within my constituency,” he explains of his new role representing the patch that once sent Sir John Major to Parliament. “As a new MP, you want to set the right tone. You want to set the right playbook; what sort of MP you’re going to be. Hopefully over the first few months I’ve given a lot of people – especially people who maybe doubted me or wouldn’t vote for me – reason to think, ‘Actually, you know what, this guy might be all right’.”
Obese-Jecty on Operation Herrick 11 - Sangin Foot Patrol
Like many other newly elected MPs, Obese-Jecty comes to Parliament from a military background. Just three months after commissioning from Sandhurst, he was sent to Iraq, where he volunteered as a battle casualty replacement in Basra. In Afghanistan, he mentored the Afghan National Army’s 2nd Kandak battalion in Helmand Province.
On leaving the service, Obese-Jecty was appointed by former veterans’ minister Johnny Mercer to the Veterans Advisory and Pension Committee, a position he held for three years. A stint in financial services followed.
While constituency work will be his priority, Obese-Jecty is dismayed by the lack of conversation around Labour’s defence strategy.
“I recognise that defence is a difficult brief. [But Defence Secretary John Healey] made a lot of pledges on his way into government. He said he would conduct his ‘Nato test’ within 100 days,” Obese-Jecty points out, referring to Labour’s promise to apply a test to all UK major defence projects that checks whether Nato obligations are being met. “We’re two thirds of the way through that.”
Though the new MP admits defence questions have been scheduled for after the party conferences, he says there’s nothing stopping the Defence Secretary from outlining his plans through the media.
“All we’ve got is what’s very opaquely mentioned in the Labour manifesto, and that was very – as we said in military circles – ‘big hand, small map’; it’s really easy to cover the ground, but just by going, ‘Oh, go from here to there’ without any other detail.
“That’s the element at the moment a lot of people are looking slightly squinty-eyed at, thinking, ‘What are you actually planning to do?’. There doesn’t seem to be a coherent, holistic view of defence.”
Is Labour making the UK more unsafe by failing to communicate its defence strategy?
“I don’t think it’s more unsafe, but I do think it gives an exploitable opportunity to our potential foes to operate in that vacuum – that vacuum of information – to be able to set their own stall out, to be able to prod and poke effectively,” he says.
I’m massively keen to be well-liked within my constituency
Somewhat boldly, Obese-Jecty commits to always being honest as an MP. If he finds himself in the wrong, he says he will be the first to admit it. “If there was something that the Conservative government was saying that I didn’t believe and back, you won’t catch me saying it for the sake of saying it.”
It is perhaps for this reason he is supporting Kemi Badenoch for Conservative Party leader. Writing in The Telegraph, Obese-Jecty said people wanted “honest answers” and “moral courage in decision-making” – qualities he sees in the shadow housing secretary.
“If the current government continues on the direction that they’re going, we’re going to need to have a leader that can hit the ground running and get up to speed very, very quickly,” he tells The House. For him, that leader is Badenoch.
The reason Obese-Jecty is currently sitting in Portcullis House has much to do with Badenoch, who has been a “great supporter” of his. However, his path to Parliament has not been straightforward.
Obese-Jecty, 45, grew up in Kingston upon Thames. His father came to the UK from Ghana in 1953 at the age of four and remained in the UK after meeting Obese-Jecty’s mother, who was from Sussex. While his parents were not overly political, they both held “strong conservative values” that were instilled in Obese-Jecty at a “very young age”.
When the 1992 recession hit, his father – a chartered surveyor – lost his business, and the family became homeless. Despite this, Obese-Jecty says his parents made “great sacrifices” to ensure their family had “the best start in life”.
The son of a Black father and white mother, Obese-Jecty says his parents taught him he was “no different to anybody else”, and that “application and hard work are the cornerstones of success”.
Obese-Jecty with John Major
But when he ran unsuccessfully for Parliament in 2019, he says he was surprised to be the subject of racial slurs. Today, Obese-Jecty claims to have faced more than 100 instances of racial abuse as a Black member of the Conservative Party. He says more than 90 per cent of it has come from other Black people.
“I get referred to as c**n, a house negro, an Uncle Tom, coconut, sellout, all of those terms,” he says, explaining that the people who try to justify this racial abuse – all of which he reports to the police – say they are holding Obese-Jecty to account for failing to represent Black communities.
“I’ve never claimed to be part of the Black community,” says Obese-Jecty. “I’m not here as a Black politician. I’m just a Conservative MP. The fact that I am Black is neither here nor there.”
He has angered people who say such terms are not universally racist; they are commonly used terms of political critique or satire. But Obese-Jecty sees this as a type of racism, “always coming from the left”, that needs addressing.
“On a low level as a nation, the narrative has slowly got out there that as a Black person, you can’t be successful in this country because people are always looking to hold you back. It’s like, no they’re not, just get out there and do it.”
Obese-Jecty thinks this is one of the reasons why knife crime is such a problem. “We allow this nihilistic worldview amongst young people that everything is against them. They can’t belong. So you might as well go and indulge in a life of crime, or you might as well be paranoid that every other kid is carrying a knife, so you have to carry one.”
Knife crime, he says, is something he feels “quite passionate” about. Prior to his selection he lived in an area of north London where 13 people were murdered within a mile and a half radius over a two-year period, a number of them children; he “would love” to use his time in Parliament to combat the issue, he says.
For now, he is getting used to how Parliament works. In these early days – he refers to them as “the shock of capture” – it means retrieving belongings misplaced from a temporary locker, and strategising how to get from his Richmond House office to Parliament as quickly as possible. “I think I’m actually the MP furthest from the Chamber!”
But he has also questioned plans to build a hospital – now going ahead – and a medical waste incinerator in his constituency. “I think people locally are just pleased to see that their new MP is keen, eager and willing to get stuck in,” he says, “and someone who is not afraid to raise his head above the parapet.”
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