Kemi Badenoch: The darling of the conservative right wants to lead them back to power

Never afraid to lash out, new Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch’s willingness to say what others might consider unspeakable has made her the darling of the Tory grassroots.

Her outspoken views on issues from gender identity to institutional racism delighted right-wing supporters while outraged critics on the left in equal measure.

During a turbulent ministerial career, Ms Badenoch clashed with civil servants over her insistence that public buildings should have separate toilets for men and women and faced accusations of bullying her own officials.

Seen as the scourge of the ‘revival’ for some Tories, her direct, shoot-from-the-hip style provides the best antidote to the allure of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Others, however, fear that her confrontational approach – it is frequently said that she could start a fight in an empty room – risks generating unnecessary controversy that distracts from the imperative to regain lost political ground.

Just at the party’s recent annual conference in Birmingham, she had to clarify comments suggesting she believed maternity pay was too high and that “bad” public servants should be in jail.

For her part, Ms Badenoch denied she was deliberately seeking confrontation or engaging in the so-called “culture wars”.

Equally, she was never one to back down when criticized.

When Doctor Who actor David Tennant said at an LGBT+ awards ceremony that he wished he woke up in a world where she “didn’t exist anymore” and wished he would “shut up”, Ms Badenoch responded, vowing not to be silenced by a “rich, left-handed, white male celebrity” attacking “the only black woman in government.”

The conflict has at times reflected her difficult relationship with elements of the LGBT+ community – she faced calls to resign as equality minister when three government advisers on the issue resigned over the government’s failure to ban gay conversion therapy.

For some, it was a surprise to hear such conservative views from a black woman – when she first arrived at Westminster, she was sometimes mistaken for a Labor MP.

Ms Badenoch however made it clear that her political outlook is firmly rooted in her Nigerian heritage.

Her path to the Conservative leadership was anything but conventional.

Born in a private Catholic maternity hospital in Wimbledon, she grew up in Nigeria, where her father was a general practitioner and her mother a lecturer in physiology.

When the country’s economy collapsed in the 1990s, her parents took advantage of her British passport to remove her, sending her at the age of 16 to live with a family friend in Morden, south London, to continue her education.

Ms Badenoch – who spoke Yoruba before speaking English – later said she was “to all intents and purposes a first-generation immigrant”.

Enrolling at a local college to study A-levels, she also worked part-time at McDonald’s to support herself.

Coming from a solid middle-class background, with the assumption that he would become a doctor, it was a shock to find himself among working-class youth from whom little was expected.

With her tutors trying to discourage her from applying for “things I wouldn’t go into”, she decided to study computer engineering at Sussex University.

The attitudes she encountered among left-wing students – “born into the middle class of north London, who couldn’t get into Oxbridge” – helped her move into Conservative politics.

In particular, she was angered by the “high-minded” way in which they talked about Africa, while understanding little of the realities of life on the continent.

“These stupid lefty white kids didn’t know what they were talking about,” she told The Times. “And that instinctively made me think, ‘these are not my people.’

After leaving university, she initially worked as a software engineer before moving into banking as an associate director at Coutts, later becoming digital director at The Spectator magazine.

In 2005, aged 25, she joined the Conservative Party, citing Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and (perhaps more surprisingly) Airey Neave – who was assassinated by the INLA in 1979 – among her political heroes.

She unsuccessfully stood for the Labour-held Dulwich and West Norwood constituency in the 2005 general election, but won the Westminster election in the safe Conservative seat of Saffron Walden in 2017.

An ardent Brexiteer, she made an immediate impression, describing the vote to leave the EU as “the biggest ever vote of confidence in the UK project” in her maiden speech and securing a seat on the Conservative 1922 Committee executive.

When Boris Johnson became prime minister in 2019, he gave Ms Badenoch his first government role as junior minister for children and families.

Promoted to equalities minister, she made headlines with her outspoken defense of the controversial Sewell report, commissioned in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, which found the UK was not institutionally racist.

Her comments reflected a long-standing distrust of identity politics – she complained about the way her three mixed-race children with her banker husband Hamish Badenoch are seen exclusively as black.

Her pursuit through the ministerial ranks under Mr Johnson did not prevent her from joining the wave of resignations precipitated by the Chris Pincher scandal that eventually forced her out of No 10 in 2022.

Despite her relative inexperience, Ms Badenoch entered the contest to succeed him as Conservative leader, finishing a creditable fourth of the eight candidates on the ballot, dramatically raising her profile in the process.

She was rewarded with a Cabinet promotion by the winner, Liz Truss, who appointed her international trade secretary – a post she retained under Rishi Sunak, who also gave her the brief on women and equality.

Although publicly loyal during her tenure as premier, Ms Badenoch was reported to have run into it following the Tories’ general election defeat, marking her decision to call a snap poll without consulting the Cabinet as unconstitutional.

Launching her second leadership bid in two years, she claimed they “talked to the right but governed to the left” as she set out her proposal for a smaller state with the government doing “less things ”, but doing them with “shine”.

Ms Badenoch sparked further controversy with a newspaper article in which she claimed that “not all cultures are equally valid” in the sense that immigrants to the UK should “share our values ​​and contribute to our society”.

It will now be up to those party members who have adored her for so long to decide whether she can now be the leader to put them on the road back to power.