Shake on it! Kemi Badenoch’s the business in hi-tech Tel Aviv

“I didn’t quite know what to expect. You read so much about Israel and it hasn’t disappointed at all.”

Her enthusiasm contrasts somewhat with the mood on the street. Thousands have been demonstrating over the judicial reform plans of the Israeli government and what they see as the “end of democracy” in the country.

But Badenoch is keeping a cool head. “I think what [the Netanyahu government] is doing is new… and so quite often, whenever you’re doing something new as a government, you will get some challenge,” she tells me.

Does she have sympathy for those who think Israeli democracy is about to end? “I think if there was no democracy then we wouldn’t be seeing protests either,” she replies. “The protests are in and of themselves a function of a democracy, where people are allowed to express discontent or a different opinion.”

Badenoch, however, is not on a three-day trip to Israel to opine about the state of the country’s democracy.

She’s here to help Israel and the UK better prepare for the resumption of negotiations towards a Free Trade Agreement — an upgrade from the 1995 deal made with the EU, which was then adopted bilaterally after Brexit.

That deal, she says, wrongly treats Israel like an agrarian economy. “It’s very similar to ours in that it’s 80 per cent services. We don’t really have any predominantly services-focused free trade agreements yet,” she says.

The relationship between Teva and the NHS is an example of where a such trade deal could have a very positive impact. It is estimated that the Israeli company’s generic medicines save the NHS around £2.7 billion every year.

Teva employs 1,200 people in the UK across four sites, and is the largest manufacturer of generics in Britain. Britain is already Israel’s largest export destination in Europe and its fourth-largest trading partner in exports and imports after the US, China and Germany.

The total trade in goods and services (exports plus imports) between the UK and Israel was £7 billion in the 12 months to the end of Q3 2022, an increase of 51.7 per cent or £2.4 billion on the 12 months to the end of Q3 2021.

But according to Department of Trade’s figures released last month, the total UK market share in Israel for both goods and services went down between 2020 and 2021 by 0.7 and 0.9 per cent respectively.

“It is one of the trade deals that I’m prioritising and it all depends on how many issues come up as we begin the negotiating,” Badenoch says.

After meeting the Secretary of State in Jerusalem on Monday, Israel’s minister of the economy, Nir Barkat, released an almost celebratory statement, declaring that Israel was “on the verge of signing a historic trade agreement”.

Badenoch sounds a more cautious note. “We’ve only had one negotiating round,” she says, “whereas on the other trade deals I’m working on we’re on round eight or round nine, and that’s pretty typical. So that’s what I mean by we’re at the beginning.”

Keen to be positive about the progress made, and above all about the strength of the relationship at every level, she says: “It’s very good to have my counterpart be so enthused and excited because the personal relationships are often the thing that really drives the agreement. If ministers don’t get along, then it’s hard for us to find common ground to resolve issues.”

Ultimately, as many warned both before and after Brexit, trade deals take time and effort to be negotiated.

“I think it all depends on how well we work together and how much the rest of the political environment is aligned to allow us to progress,” she explains, possibly hinting at a potential barrier to rapid progress because that “political environment” in Israel is certainly challenging.

She is adamant that trade happens between countries, not governments, so a trade agreement must look after the needs and wants of citizens. But there are those British citizens who call for boycotts of Israel, I point out.

The Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, she replies, is born of “a very high level of ignorance” and a lack of understanding about the current level of integration between Israel and the UK.

“They don’t know that the drugs they’re taking are being made by Israel… I think we need to move beyond sort of student politics in terms of how we conduct ourselves with our foreign counterparts and be serious.”

Badenoch wastes no time in identifying the BDS movement with the political left. “I don’t think the right tends to do boycotts,” she says.

“Even when we say we’re going to boycott things, I remember people saying they were going to boycott Ben & Jerry’s, they didn’t really do that.

"I think that’s more a function of how the left and right respond to certain things. The left is often very much a protest movement, whereas the right is more policy focused.”

Cynics sometimes sneer at the diplomatic theatre during political trips to Israel: a ceremony at Yad Vashem to commemorate the Holocaust; a trip to the Kotel to say a silent prayer and then to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; a serious-faced meeting with a Palestinian representative in Ramallah.

Some suspect that MPs, particularly those with leadership ambitions, engage in these symbolic moments merely to play to the gallery. Not Badenoch. She kept the public part of her trip strictly business.

The rest happened without much fanfare, away from the press.

“You visited the Western Wall?” I ask.

“I didn’t go right to it because there were people worshipping, and I always feel uncomfortable disturbing people who are worshipping, it’s how I was brought up.

“No pictures in churches and things like that.”

Sure enough, although her adviser promised some photos from her visit to the Old City, they never materialised.

There were, though, some photos from Yad Vashem.

“It’s a really emotional experience,” she says. “I had been to the Holocaust Museum in Rome when I was Faith Minister last year, and Yad Vashem is different, because it’s a lot more personal.”

Closer to home, she is determined that the UK’s long-delayed national Holocaust memorial and education centre should be finished.

I mention that Lord Ian Austin, the UK’s Trade Envoy to Israel, has been critical of the length of time it has taken for the memorial to be built, pointing out that David Cameron had promised it would be finished by the end of 2017. So why hasn’t building work even started?

“I don’t think David Cameron anticipated what would be required in order to make it happen” she says.

“When I was Faith Minister, I was the minister responsible for that policy area. And now, as the Secretary of State, I’m a co-sponsor for that bill, when it comes through.

“It’s important because hearing from survivors, about survivors, makes sure that it doesn’t become a myth or some kind of thing that was said not to have really happened.”

She blames objections to the memorial’s proposed location — in a small park next to the Houses of Parliament — on “opposition from people who don’t want anything to change”.
That type of objection is particularly British in nature, she claims. “The level of opposition to any kind of building in the UK is astonishing.”

Badenoch is a politician known for her ambition and bravery in the face of dogmatic identity politics.

One might have expected her to be more effusive about her first visit to Israel, but her unsentimental, down-to-earth style is possibly more persuasive, and certainly more businesslike.

“The first time you come somewhere like Israel, it’s really sort of seared in your mind that this is what the country is like,” she says as we say our goodbyes. “And it’s been a good trip.”