Leadership race: Can Kemi Badenoch rebuild the Tories' political fortunes?

Daughter of Nigerian-born parents is favourite to win Conservative Party leadership race, but she would need to unite warring factions to prevail in the next UK election

Former UK business secretary Kemi Badenoch. Her bold, direct, and often aggressive ways have made her the darling of the Tory grassroots but polarised other parts of the party. AFP

Kemi Badenoch is favourite to become the next Conservative leader when the ballot result of members is announced on Saturday, but even so, she divides the party that seems set to choose her ahead of former cabinet colleague Robert Jenrick.

She’s incisive, intelligent and has the uncompromising force of a British straight talker in the mould of the Conservatives' last great leader, Margaret Thatcher.

She’s rude, dismissive, argumentative and more interested in climbing the ladder than making friends.

Those are the contrasting views of the Tories that Ms Badenoch will seek to unite if she wins the ballot to replace Rishi Sunak, which closes today

It will be quite some inheritance. Tory MPs stand at a paltry 121, barely enough to fill all government ministerial positions, after losing two thirds in July’s general election.

Worse, the schisms that have undermined the Conservatives since Brexit need to be rapidly healed to prevent the party tumbling further by losing its One Nation wing to the Liberal Democrats and its right-wingers to the anti-immigration Reform party of Nigel Farage.

Ms Badenoch certainly is a strong character; a trait that will be sorely tested in the five years leading to the next election.

That is, of course, if she survives that long. Even before being elected, some party insiders have speculated that her term could be measured in months (“another Liz Truss”) and that a resurrected Boris Johnson could return.

Former government ministers, Tory officials and MPs have given The National their views on how the daughter of Nigerian-born parents might handle leading a party that has produced 15 prime ministers in the last 100 years, but has had five leaders in the past decade.

Forthright or rude?

In the course of a turbulent ministerial career Ms Badenoch has clashed with civil servants due to her shoot-from-the-hip style and it is said she generates needless, distracting controversies. At the party’s recent annual conference in Birmingham she had to clarify off-the-cuff comments suggesting she believed maternity pay was too high and that “bad” civil servants should be in prison.

“I met her once and thought she was rude, off-hand and not a Conservative that I recognised,” said a Tory party fixer. “She was always looking over your shoulder for the most important person in the room.”

That contrasts with former defence and foreign office minister Tobias Ellwood’s view. “What I enjoyed about Kemi in government was her open-mindedness,” he said. “And now her willingness to recognise that the long haul is required to rebuild as nobody's listening to us and we've got a lot of homework to do.”

Ms Badenoch will certainly capture headlines with her forthright views with it sometimes said that her confrontational approach “could start a fight in an empty room”.

But she has the thick skin to ride out controversy, a quality essential to survive as leader of the opposition, arguably the worst job in politics.

Clearly the 45-year-old politician impresses some and irks others.

“I think we could do a lot better,” said the Conservative fixer. “We need somebody who can give us hope and a belief that things will get better. All Kemi will do is make you feel things are going to get worse.” He added that as a right-winger she was unlikely to win back Conservatives who voted Liberal Democrat.

“She is still pretty much an unknown quantity,” said former Welsh secretary David Jones. “But she is a forceful performer and can be quite strident in the House, particularly on issues of race. She is feisty, which is obviously a good thing, but you also need someone who can oversee strong policy development, that is urgently required.”

Different path

Her road towards the Conservative leadership has been anything but conventional. Born in England, Ms Badenoch grew up in Nigeria until aged 16, speaking Yoruba before she spoke English. While she had been expected to follow her father into medicine or her mother into academia – she is a physiology lecturer - she ended up in banking then publishing before winning a seat in 2017.

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

Ms Badenoch has, however, made clear that her political outlook is firmly rooted in her Nigerian heritage. She has said that 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.

Fourteen years of Conservative leaders - in pictures

Having come from a solidly middle-class background with an assumption she would go on to become a doctor, it came as something of a shock to find herself among working class youngsters of whom little was expected.

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

The attitudes she encountered among the left-wing students – “snotty middle-class north Londoners who couldn’t get into Oxbridge” – helped drive her into Conservative politics.

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

In 2005, at the age of 25, she joined the Conservative Party, citing Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and (perhaps more surprisingly) Airey Neave – who was assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army in 1979 – among her political heroes.

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

An ardent Brexiteer, she made an immediate impression, describing the vote to leave the EU as “the greatest ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom” in her maiden speech and securing a place on the executive of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee.

When Boris Johnson became prime minister in 2019, he handed Ms Badenoch her first government role as junior minister for children and families. Her rise through the ministerial ranks under Mr Johnson did not stop her joining the tidal wave of resignations, precipitated by the Chris Pincher scandal, which finally forced him out of No 10 in 2022.

Despite her relative inexperience, Ms Badenoch stood in the contest to succeed him as Tory leader, finishing a creditable fourth out of the eight candidates to make it on to the ballot paper, dramatically raising her profile in the process.

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

Return to power

It may take the public some time to forget the turmoil of the Tory years that saw prime ministers come and go at regular intervals, in particular the Partygate disgrace of Boris Johnson’s tenure and economic disasters of Liz Truss’s 49 days in office.

“Primarily we've got to win trust,” said former justice secretary Robert Buckland, who worked with Ms Badenoch in government. “Without trust, we don't get anywhere in terms of electoral success.”

Which he believes is where Ms Badenoch will thrive. “Contrary to the reputation of her being difficult, she’s frank and honest about things and actually a good person to work with.”

What the July election demonstrated was that Britain’s traditional two-party system is fragmenting with voters drifting both to the populist anti-immigration right and somewhat to the left.

To win the 2029 election, Ms Badenoch will have to define the Conservative Party in terms of what it’s for and against, a challenging task given the diverging views of the right and liberal wings.

She might resurrect the Rwanda deportation policy that her predecessor expended considerable political capital on. But in doing so she will almost certainly have to announce abandoning the European Convention on Human Rights, a policy that will at a stroke ostracise the liberal wing.

But the looming threat of Mr Farage’s Reform party, which won 14 per cent of the national vote, will nag away, unless Labour does her a favour with its own immigration policies proving a success.

Kemi united

The Conservatives have for the last two centuries been an election victory machine, winning 25 since 1841, making them the most successful modern political party.

Yet that could dramatically change, warned Mr Buckland. “Tories need to realise how dangerous a position they're in,” he said. “It's absolutely essential for everybody on the front bench to knuckle down and get on with the job of opposing the government and not opposing each other,” he said. “That's why Kemi deserves our support.”

Mr Ellwood argued that Ms Badenoch had recognised that to win power the party had to “appeal way beyond its base”.

“But our first objective is to be a strong opposition,” he added. “That's that stepping stone to getting back into Number 10. We can only do that if we show unity of purpose, which was missing in the last couple of years.”

Mr Ellwood, who lost his seat in the last election, praised the “pluck and determination” of Ms Badenoch, a mother of three married to a banker, saying it was reminiscent of Mrs Thatcher who led Britain from 1979 to 1990.

“She makes occasional errors and gets into squabbles but that's what reminded me about Margaret Thatcher. She just built up momentum until 1979 when it went ‘boom’ and she then got in.”

Ms Badenoch has popular appeal among Tory members despite having said little on what her actual policies might be. Unlike Mr Jenrick, she has not as yet committed to withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, but she is an ardent Brexiteer who advocates a smaller state and upholding UK sovereignty.

She has also spoken out against what she calls “identity politics” on race and gender, while also being critical of left-wing positions on Africa.

She also stated that Israel had shown “moral clarity in dealing with its enemies” following the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last month.

Bitter Brexit

To rebuild from the corrosiveness of Brexit, Ms Badenoch will need to allay the fears of those Brexiteers who felt burnt by her “completely scuppering” the retained EU law, which kept much of European legislation on the statute books.

“You'll understand why I'm slightly jaundiced when I see her flaunting her Brexit credentials,” said a Brexiteer MP. “She did a lot to make Brexit less effective than it might have been.”

He added that her rival in the leadership race, Robert Jenrick, who is trailing significantly in the polls, is “intellectually significantly superior” and that he “does impress me more than she does”.

Fourth woman

What is remarkable is that the Conservatives stand to have their fourth female and second ethnic minority leader, whereas Labour has produced none.

This demonstrably shows that the party is a meritocracy that breaks through barriers “without the need for special favours or quotas”, said Mr Buckland.

This could still prove an election-winning formula, he added. “We just pick the best person for the job, reflecting the country that we want Britain to be, which is that if you've got talent, something to offer, then there's no barriers and nothing stopping you. It’s a very eloquent statement of good Conservative principles.”