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

LONDON (AP) — Kemi Badenoch has become the first black woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She is an optimistic and outspoken libertarian who thinks the British state is broken – and that she is the one who can fix it with smaller government and radical new ideas.

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

She said 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, even though we're an oil-producing country,” Badenoch told the BBC last week.

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

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

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 number of government positions in Prime Minister Boris Johnson's 2019–22 government before becoming part of a mass exodus of ministers in July 2022 over a series of ethics scandals that triggered Johnson's downfall.

Badenoch ran unsuccessfully to succeed Johnson, thereby increasing her profile. She was appointed Commerce Secretary in the 49-day government Prime Minister Liz Trussand business secretary under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

She retained her seat in parliament National election in Julyin which the Labor Party won a large majority and the Conservatives shrank to 121 MPs 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. She cites her engineering background as evidence that she is a problem solver and portrays herself as a disruptor, championing a low-tax, free-market economy and promising to “rewire, reboot and reboot” the British state to program”.

A critic of multiculturalism and a self-proclaimed enemy of the woke, Badenoch is an opponent of “identity politics”, gender-neutral toilets and government plans to reduce carbon emissions in the UK.

Supporters believe her charismatic, outspoken style is exactly what the Conservative Party needs to come back from the crisis worst election defeat ever. During her leadership campaign, her supporters wore T-shirts that said, “Be more Kemi.”

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

“I give my opinion,” she told the BBC. “And I’m telling the truth.”