British MP Kemi Badenoch speaks in London on Saturday after being elected as the new leader of the opposition Conservative Party. Alberto Pezzali/AP Hide caption
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Alberto Pezzali/AP
LONDON – Britain’s Conservative Party on Saturday elected outspoken MP Kemi Badenoch as its new leader as it seeks to recover from a crushing election defeat that ended 14 years in power.
Ms Badenoch (pronounced Badenoch), the first black woman to lead a major British political party, defeated rival candidate Robert Jenrick from the centre-right Conservative Party by around 100,000 votes.
She received 53,806 votes and Mr Jenrick received 41,388 votes in online and postal voting by party members.
Mr Badenoch will replace former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who led the Conservative Party to its worst election result since 1832 in July.
The new leader’s daunting task will be to restore the party’s reputation after years of division, scandal and economic turmoil, break with Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s policies on key issues such as the economy and immigration, and secure the next The aim is to return the Conservative Party to power in an election. Scheduled to expire by 2029.
“The challenges before us are tough but simple,” Badenoch said in a victory speech to a packed room of Conservative MPs, staff and journalists in London. He said the party’s job was to hold the Labor government to account and set out its commitments and plans.
Referring to the party’s election issues, she said: “We have to be honest. We have to be honest about the fact that we made a mistake, we deviated from the norm.”
“It is time to tell the truth, defend our principles, plan our future, reset our politics and thinking, and give our party and our country the fresh start it deserves.” ” said Badenoch.
Mr Badenoch, a former business secretary in Sunak’s government, was born in London to Nigerian parents and spent much of his childhood in the West African country.
The 44-year-old former software engineer has described himself as a disruptor, advocating a low-tax, free-market economy and vowing to “rewire, reboot and reprogram” the British state. Like her rival Mr Jenrick, she has criticized multiculturalism and called for a reduction in immigration, but unlike him she has not called for Britain to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights.
A self-proclaimed enemy of wokeness, Mr Badenoch opposes identity politics, gender-neutral toilets and government plans to reduce Britain’s carbon footprint. During her leadership campaign, she drew criticism for saying that “not all cultures are equally valid” and suggesting that maternity benefits were excessive.
Tim Bale, a political science professor at Queen Mary University of London, said the Conservative Party was likely to “move to the right on both economic and social policy” under Badenoch.
He said Badenoch would “pursue what could be called a boat, boiler and toilet strategy…very focused on trans issues, immigration issues and skepticism about progress towards net zero. ” I predicted.
While the Conservative Party is not representative of the country as a whole – the majority of its 132,000 members are wealthy, older white men – its top ranks are significantly more diverse.
Ms Badenoch will become the fourth female leader of the Conservative Party after Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss became prime minister. She is the second Conservative Party leader of color after Mr Sunak, and the first Conservative Party leader with African roots. In contrast, the centre-left Labor Party has been led exclusively by white men.
In the leadership election, which lasted more than three months, Conservative MPs used a series of votes to reduce their field from six candidates, with the final two being given to a wide range of party members.
Both final candidates were from the party’s right wing and claimed they could win back voters from populist Nigel Farage’s far-right anti-immigrant Reform UK party, which is eating into Conservative support.
However, the party lost many voters to the victorious Labor Party and the centrist Liberal Democrats, and some Conservatives feared that a right-wing course would alienate the party from public opinion. are.
Starmer’s government had a rocky first few months in office, with negative headlines, financial depression and plummeting approval ratings.
But Mr Bale said the historical record suggested Mr Badenoch was unlikely to return the Conservatives to power in 2029.
“It’s highly unusual for a party to take over and manage to win an election when it’s been badly beaten. But Keir Starmer has done just that since 2019. “That’s why records need to be broken,” he said.
