U.K. Conservatives pick Kemi Badenoch as new leader, 1st Black woman to head a big British party

Britain's Member of Parliament Kemi Badenoch smiles as she poses for the media after being elected as the new leader of the opposition Conservative Party, in London, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

LONDON -

Outspoken, right-leaning lawmaker Kemi Badenoch was named leader of Britain's opposition Conservatives on Saturday, as the party tries to rebound from a crushing election defeat that ended its 14 years in power.

The first Black woman to lead a major British political party, Badenoch has pledged to bring the right-of-center Tories "renewal" by pushing for a smaller state and rejecting identity politics.

Badenoch defeated rival candidate Robert Jenrick in an online and postal ballot of party members, securing 57% of the almost 100,000 votes cast, to Jenrick's 43%.

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Badenoch, 44, replaces former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who in July led the Conservatives to their worst election result since 1832.

The new leader's daunting challenge is to restore the party's reputation after years of division, scandal and economic tumult, hammer Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer's policies on key issues including the economy and immigration, and return the Conservatives to power at the next election, due by 2029.

"The task that stands before us is tough but simple," Badenoch said in a victory speech to a roomful of Conservative lawmakers, staff and journalists in London. She said the party's job was to hold the Labour government to account, and to craft pledges and a plan for government.

Addressing the party's election drubbing, she said "we have to be honest -- honest about the fact that we made mistakes, honest about the fact that we let standards slip."

"The time has come to tell the truth, to stand up for our principles, to plan for our future, to reset our politics and our thinking, and to give our party, and our country, the new start that they deserve," Badenoch said.

A business secretary in Sunak's government, Badenoch was born in London to Nigerian parents and spent much of her childhood in the West African country.

The former software engineer depicts herself as a disruptor, arguing for a low-tax, free-market economy and pledging to "rewire, reboot and reprogram" the British state. Like her rival Jenrick, she has criticized multiculturalism and called for lower immigration, though unlike him she has not demanded that Britain leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

A self-proclaimed enemy of wokeness, Badenoch opposes identity politics, gender-neutral bathrooms and government plans to reduce U.K. carbon emissions. During the leadership campaign she drew criticism for saying that "not all cultures are equally valid," and for suggesting that maternity pay was excessive.

Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said the Conservative Party was likely to "swing towards the right both in terms of its economic policies and its social policies" under Badenoch.

He predicted Badenoch would pursue "what you might call the boats, boilers and bathrooms strategy .... focusing very much on the trans issue, the immigration issue and skepticism about progress towards net zero."

While the Conservative Party is unrepresentative of the country as a whole -- its dwindling membership of 132,000 is largely made up of affluent, older white men -- its upper echelons have become markedly more diverse.

Badenoch is the Tories' fourth female leader, after Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss, all of whom became prime minister. She's the second Conservative leader of color, after Sunak, and the first with African roots. The center-left Labour Party has a more diverse membership but has only ever been led by white men.

In a leadership contest that lasted more than three months, Conservative lawmakers reduced the field from six candidates in a series of votes before putting the final two to the wider party membership.

Both finalists came from the right of the party, and argued they could win voters back from Reform U.K., the hard-right, anti-immigrant party led by populist politician Nigel Farage that has eaten away at Conservative support.

But the party also lost many voters to the winning party, Labour, and to the centrist Liberal Democrats, and some Conservatives worry that tacking right will lead the party away from public opinion.

Starmer's government has had a rocky first few months in office, beset by negative headlines, fiscal gloom and a plummeting approval rating.

But Bale said that the historical record suggests the odds are against Badenoch leading the Conservatives back to power in 2029.

"It's quite unusual for someone to take over when a party gets very badly beaten and manage to lead it to election victory," he said. "However, Keir Starmer did exactly that after 2019. So records are there to be broken."