The Tories have finally done what they should have done two years ago. If they had, we may well not have seen the Starmer Labor government elected.
They’ve elected Kemi Badenoch leader.
For those who care about such things, Badenoch ticks off the intersectional boxes: female, black, child of immigrants – indeed spending much of her childhood in her parents’ native Nigeria. But for those of us who care about character rather than colour, Badenoch is exactly what the Conservatives’ base have been desperately waiting for: an actual, centre-right conservative, with real-life experience rather than a soulless political apparatchik.
Kemi Badenoch has promised to win back voters who have deserted the Conservatives after securing a historic victory in the party’s leadership contest […]
The Saffron Walden MP said the Conservatives need to “bring back” voters who abandoned them, adding: “Our party is critical to the success of our country.
“But to be heard, we have to be honest.”
The party must admit it “made mistakes” and “let standards slip” over the last 14 years in government, she said.
Badenoch chose not to set out detailed policies during her campaign, focusing instead on returning the Conservatives to “first principles”.
Badenoch was born in London to wealthy Nigerian parents. She spent much of her childhood in Nigeria before returning to London at age 16, where she worked at McDonald’s while studying computer systems engineering. She later got a law degree and worked in financial services. In 2012, she married banker Hamish Badenoch, with whom she has three children.
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 ran out of fuel frequently despite being an oil-producing country,” Badenoch told the BBC last week.
Which sounds not unlike the Britain of the early 1970s, which so shaped Margaret Thatcher’s ascension to politics.
“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 always will be. They don’t realize just how much work and sacrifice was required in order to get that” […]
Like many Conservatives, Badenoch idolizes Margaret Thatcher, the party’s first female leader, who transformed Britain with her free-market policies in the 1980s. Citing her engineering background as evidence, she’s a problem-solver, she depicts herself as a disruptor, arguing for a low-tax, free-market economy and pledging 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 reduce UK carbon emissions.
Even her critics make her sound pretty good.
Critics say Badenoch has clashed with colleagues and civil servants and has a tendency to make rash statements and provoke unnecessary fights. During the leadership campaign she drew criticism for saying that “not all cultures are equally valid”.
And?
It remains to be seen whether Badenoch lives up to her promise – remember Boris Johnson? – but even half of what she promises would be a major step in the right direction.
