Kemi Badenoch wins race to be next Tory leader

Kemi Badenoch is the new Conservative Party leader after a contest lasting over 14 weeks.

With 53,806 votes, Badenoch beat her rival Robert Jenrick by 12,418 votes – but says he will “play a key role” in the party’s future.

There’s been gaffes – like when Badenoch suggested maternity pay was excessive – and surprises, when James Cleverly was knocked out the race shortly after leaping into the lead.

Badenoch’s elevation as leader of Britain’s Conservatives is a historic moment in British politics — but you can expect the Tories to take it in their stride.

The 44-year-old is the first Black woman to become a leader of a major U.K. political party, after defeating her opponent Robert Jenrick in a vote of Tory members on Saturday.

She follows in the footsteps of a cluster of British Black and Asian Conservative MPs who have served in high office over recent years — including James Cleverly, Suella Braverman, Priti Patel and Sajid Javid. 

Badenoch was born in the U.K. and grew up in Nigeria, before returning to London as a teenager to finish her schooling and attend university.

In 2023, she called Britain “the best country in the world to be Black” — eliciting applause from right-wing newspapers and a torrent of criticism from progressive pundits.

But it is a source of real pride for the Conservatives — dusting themselves off from a major election defeat earlier this year — that they have just chosen their second leader in a row from an ethnic minority and their fourth female leader. The party’s first ethnic minority leader was Benjamin Disraeli, who first served as prime minister back in 1868.

Badenoch’s entry to parliament came seven years after members of Cameron’s A-list won election.

She stood for selection in the ultra-safe Tory seat of Saffron Walden in 2017 and was up against two candidates from central casting; an ex-aide of then Prime Minister Theresa May and the daughter of a former Tory MP.

In one hustings she got the local members onside by opening: “I’d love to start off by talking about how my family has been here for generations and generations — but I think we all know that’s not true.”

The room rippled with laughter as she revealed one of her key political strengths — an ability to disarm and entertain with her sharp, sometimes too sharp, wit.

Her strong skepticism of “identity politics” is also seen as an asset against a Labour Party which has often found itself unable or unwilling to confront difficult issues of race and gender in modern Britain.