The election was called after the announcement of the resignation of former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, in the wake of the historic electoral defeat of the Conservatives in the last legislative elections on July 4. “The time has come to tell the truth, to stand up for our principles, to plan for our future, to rethink our politics and our thinking and to give our party and our country the fresh start they deserve,” said Kemi Badenoch just after announcing his victory.
This 44-year-old engineer by training who had already tried, without success, to take the lead of the conservative party in 2022 will now have a lot to do to revive the largely weakened Tories after their historic electoral debacle in the last legislative elections. With 121 elected officials, the party lost two thirds of its deputies in the House of Commons.
Voters sanctioned him after 14 years in power, marked by Brexit, so many believe that it has not been the promised success, an austerity policy that has impoverished public services and the scandals of the era of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. But many people question Kemi Badenoch’s ability to unify and rebuild a very divided party and the relevance of the turn to the right that she seems to want to make it take.
Outspokenness that appeals to the party base
Born in the United Kingdom to parents of Nigerian origin and having grown up in this African country before returning to England at 16, Kemi Badenoch arrived at the head of the Tories with a reputation as an outspoken go-getter, who appealed to the militant base but sometimes bristles even in its own camp.
An MP since 2017, she held several secondary ministerial positions from 2019 under Boris Johnson, before being promoted by Liz Truss then Rishi Sunak, where she was Trade Minister. During her campaign she advocated a return to “true conservatism”, without expanding much on her political program. After a legislative election marked by the rise to power of the far-right Reform UK party, the campaign was dominated by the subject of immigration.
Kemi Badenoch made it one of his priorities, asserting in particular that it “was not good” for the country and that “all cultures are not equal” to justify a more targeted migration policy. An outing which sparked controversy, not the first for this person used to making shocking statements.
During the last Conservative Party conference, this mother of three children married to a banker shocked people by suggesting that maternity leave pay was “excessive” or by estimating that 10% of civil servants in the administration were so bad that they “should be in prison.”
Very critical of “identity politics” consisting of asserting the specific rights of certain communities (ethnic, sexual, etc.), Kemi Badenoch appears “anti-woke” and has accused his party of having shown itself increasingly more “liberal” on societal issues like gender. She also said she was “skeptical” about the carbon neutrality objective that the United Kingdom has set.
According to conservative Michael Ashcroft, author of a biography on the new leader, she “radicalized” herself to the right of the party when she was at university, through contact with student activists whom she described as ” “metropolitan elite in the making, spoiled, privileged and pretentious”.
“I’m not a shy person. And people often use your strengths to present them as weaknesses,” she said in the final stretch of the campaign. “I will need all (the deputies) to work with me,” she also insisted, reaching out to the leaders of her party.
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