Who is Kemi Badenoch, the first black woman to lead the British Conservative Party?

LONDON – Kemi Badenoch, the first black woman to lead a major British political party, is an optimistic and outspoken libertarian who thinks the British state is broken – and that she is the one who needs to fix it with a smaller government and radical new ideas .

The new leader of Britain’s right-wing Conservative Party was born in London in 1980 as Olukemi Adegoke to wealthy Nigerian parents – a doctor and an academic – and spent much of her childhood in the West African country.

She has said that the experience of Nigeria’s economic and social upheavals shaped her political outlook.

“I grew up somewhere where the lights didn’t come on, where we often ran out of fuel, despite being an oil-producing country,” Badenoch told the BBC last week.

“I don’t take for granted what we have in this country,” she said. “I meet a lot of people who assume that it is good here because it is good here and it always will be. They don’t realize how much work and sacrifice it took.”

Returning to Britain at the age of 16 during a period of unrest in Nigeria, she worked part-time at McDonalds while completing school, and then studied computer systems engineering at the University of Sussex. She later earned a law degree and worked in the financial services industry.

In 2012, she married banker Hamish Badenoch, with whom she has three children.

She was elected to the London Assembly in 2015 and to Parliament in 2017. She held a series of government posts in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government from 2019-2022, before becoming part of a mass ministerial exodus in July 2022 over a range of ethical issues. scandals that caused Johnson’s downfall.

Badenoch tried unsuccessfully to succeed Johnson, raising her profile. She was appointed commerce secretary during China’s 49-day government Prime Minister Liz Trussand business secretary Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

She retained her seat in parliament July national electionsin which the Labor Party won a large majority and the Conservatives were reduced to 121 legislators in the 650-seat House of Commons.

Like many conservatives, Badenoch idolizes Margaret Thatcher, the party’s first female leader, who transformed Britain in the 1980s with her free-market policies. Citing her engineering background as evidence that she is a problem solver, she portrays herself as a disruptor, advocating a free market economy with low taxes and promising to ‘rewire, reboot and reprogram’ the British state.

A critic of multiculturalism and self-proclaimed enemy of wokeness, Badenoch is an opponent of ‘identity politics’, gender-neutral bathrooms and government plans to cut UK carbon emissions.

Supporters think her charismatic, outspoken style is exactly what the Conservative Party needs to bounce back from existence worst election defeat ever. During her leadership campaign, her donors wore T-shirts with the exhortation: “Be more Kemi.”

Critics say Badenoch has clashed with colleagues and officials and has a tendency to make hasty statements and provoke unnecessary fights. During the leadership campaign, she was criticized for saying that “not all cultures are equally valid” and for suggesting that maternity pay was excessive – although she later walked back that claim.

“I say what I think,” she told the BBC. “And I tell the truth.”