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Like her political heroine Margaret Thatcher, Kemi Badenoch is divided even within her own party.
Her firm views, “anti-woke” values, and no-nonsense style have made her a popular figure on the conservative right and in the party’s grassroots, many of whom see her as a future star.
Others point out what they consider to be her belligerent nature and tendency to cause controversy.
On what went wrong for the Conservatives in the general election, the former business secretary said the party had “claimed to the right but ruled on the left” and that to regain power they had to “stop acting like Labor.” ” We analyze that it is necessary.
This is a promise she has made central to her Conservative leadership campaign, which is focused on changing the fundamental mindset of the British nation.
Olukemi Adegoke was born in Wimbledon in 1980, one of three children born to Nigerian parents. Her father worked as a general physician, and her mother was a professor of physiology.
Badenoch, who married banker Hamish Badenoch in 2012 and has three children, grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and in the United States, where her mother lectured.
Due to the deteriorating political and economic situation in Nigeria, he returned to England at the age of 16 to live with his mother’s friends, working at McDonald’s and other places while studying for his A-levels at a university in south London. .
After completing a degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Sussex, I also completed a second degree in Law while working in the IT field.
She then moved into the financial industry, becoming an associate director at private bank Coutts and later took a non-editor role as digital director for the influential Conservative-backed magazine, The Spectator.
According to Blue Ambition, a biography written by Tory peer Lord Ashcroft, Badenoch became interested in right-wing politics at the University of Sussex, where he was “radicalized” by the left-wing campus culture.
She later described the student activists there as “a spoiled, entitled, privileged metropolitan elite in training.”
Mr Badenoch joined the Conservative Party in 2005 at the age of 25, but stood for Parliament in 2010 and unsuccessfully for the London Assembly in 2012.
She took up the vacant parliamentary seat in 2015 when two Conservative MPs, including Suella Braverman, were elected to Parliament.
She supported Brexit in the 2016 referendum and achieved her ambition to become an MP for the safe Tory seat of Saffron Walden in Essex a year later.
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Kemi Badenoch passed over several high-profile names in her bid to become Conservative Party leader in 2022, losing in the penultimate parliamentary vote.
Mr Badenoch spent three years bouncing around in lower government roles, joining the rapid exodus of ministers who toppled Boris Johnson in 2022.
To the surprise of many of his colleagues, Mr Badenoch then took part in a major campaign to succeed Mr Johnson, despite having no prior ministerial experience.
What started as a major campaign, centered around the support of loyal friends who also entered parliament in 2017, quickly gained momentum and gained a strong supporter in Michael Gove.
Mr Badenoch ended up in fourth place with the support of 59 MPs, which is more than the 42 MPs who were enough to come out on top during the parliamentary stage of the leadership election.
Her direct approach to telling colleagues to “tell the truth” earned Ms Badenoch a bigger role within the Conservative Party, with Liz Truss appointing her as international trade secretary and appointing her to the cabinet. It was inevitable that I chose that.
Rishi Sunak kept her in the post and added briefs on business, women and equality.
Her time in Congress was marked by her candor and willingness to tackle controversial issues.
As quasi-equalities minister under Johnson, he challenged the idea that systemic racism was widespread in Britain, infuriating many on the left.
In an interview with LBC, she said she had only experienced prejudice from the left.
“I came to this country when I was 16 years old and now I’m running for prime minister. Isn’t that amazing? I was born in this country, but I didn’t grow up here.
“I don’t understand why people want to ignore all the good and just focus on the bad and use the bad to tell a story,” she added.
She describes herself as a gender-critical feminist and has been an outspoken opponent of the movement to allow people to self-identify as transgender.
As cabinet member for women and equalities, she spearheaded the UK government’s efforts to block Scotland’s gender recognition reform bill.
Responding to Mr Kass’ report into the NHS gender identity service, he said the service had been “hijacked by ideologues”, critics were “gagged” and children were being harmed as a result. .
She has also opposed gender-neutral toilets.
In 2021, members of the government’s own LGBT+ advisory committee urged her to “consider her position” over her failure to deliver on her manifesto promise to ban so-called conversion therapy.
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Ms Badenoch’s stance on gender policy has won her supporters on the Conservative right.
Badenoch is often labeled a “culture warrior,” a label she disputes.
Sometimes accused of trying to start fights in empty rooms, she says she doesn’t like fighting but is ready to fight for Conservative Party principles.
That’s what endears her to Conservative MPs, but it’s also what makes some uneasy.
Several Tory MPs told the BBC in the early stages of the leadership election that they had intended to support Ms Badenoch, but had second-guessed themselves because of acrimonious interactions during her time in government.
For her supporters, that’s the point. Unlike other ministers, she was willing to tell MPs what she believed and advocated it openly.
On the eve of this year’s party conference in Birmingham, she hit the headlines with her claim that not all cultures are “equally valid”, citing the “culture where women are taught not to work” as an example. Ta.
She also attracted attention in Birmingham when she quipped that 5-10% of civil servants are bad enough to be in jail. She has previously strongly denied being bullied by authorities.
But she backtracked after an interview in which she appeared to suggest that current levels of maternity benefits were “excessive”. She claimed her words had been “misrepresented” and said she was talking about excessive corporate regulation and maternity benefits as “good things”.
In 2018, Mr Badenoch admitted that 10 years ago he had hacked into the website of Harriet Harman, then leader of the House of Commons and deputy leader of the Labor Party, in a prank. Mr. Herman accepted her apology.
Among her public spat, in February she claimed that the postmaster general she had fired had been told to delay compensation payments to subpostmasters affected by the Horizon IT scandal. He accused her of seeking “revenge.”
Henry Stanton said he had been instructed to defer payments to allow the government to “drag its feet to the election”, apparently to ease public finances.
Conservatism is ‘in crisis’
Ms Badenoch has not avoided public clashes with MPs on her side, including when she rejected calls to make discrimination against people in menopause illegal.
Appearing before the House of Commons committee, she told chairperson Caroline Noakes that “many people” wanted to use the Equality Act as “a vehicle for various personal agendas and interests”. .
During the leadership campaign, Badenoch said conservatism was under attack from new “progressive ideologies,” including “identity politics” (politics based on specific identities such as race, religion, and gender) and constant state intervention. He said he was in a “crisis”. and “the idea that bureaucrats make better decisions than individuals or elected politicians.”
She argues that despite the Conservative Party being in power for 14 years, government regulation and increased public spending are hurting economic growth and polarizing the country.
He rejected calls from Robert Jenrick to settle key party policy now, saying Britain’s “system is broken” and needed a reset.
The Conservative Party needs to return to its core values and come up with new policies that recognize this reality, she added.
