Good ideas know no borders

There is something narrow-minded about criticising a British politician for being 'America-brained'.

- Stephen Bush

Although her tenure is barely more than a month old, I can already tell what is going to annoy me most about Ms Kemi Badenoch's leadership of the Conservative Party. It is the dismissal of her political interventions with the phrase "America-brained".

A speech that she made last week (in Washington, naturally) was widely criticised for its focus on American topics, for its American audience, its use of American English and its supposed disconnection from the concerns of the British voting public.

The argument is that the Leader of the Opposition is too preoccupied with American politics, and that her dividing lines might have resonance there but not in the UK.

To be clear, I carry no brief for Ms Badenoch. Thus far, she has done nothing to suggest that she is anything other than a typical first-term opposition leader making the mistakes that a typical first-term opposition leader often makes.

Nevertheless, I think there is something corrosive about this tendency to check ideas for their passport and to substitute that for rigorous analysis.