Ms. Kemi Badenoch today Saturday emerged the new leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party.
She becomes the first Black woman to hold the post since the party’s formation 190 years ago and indeed the first of her gender and colour to lead any such partisan organisation in the country.
Fully named Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch, she previously served in the Cabinet under Prime Ministers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak from 2022 to 2024.
The first Black woman leader of a major political party in the UK, Badenoch said becoming leader was an “enormous honour”, but that “the task that stands before us is tough.”
She came out on top in the two-horse race with former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, winning 57 percent of the votes of party members.
She polled 53,806 votes, while Jenrick got 41,388 votes from the 131,680 eligible electors. The party placed turnout at 72.8 percent.
Badenoch replaces former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and has pledged to lead the party through a period of renewal, saying it had veered towards the political centre by “governing from the left” and must return to its traditional ideas.
Olukemi Adegoke was born on 2nm January 1980 in Wimbledon, London.
She is one of three children born to Nigerian Yoruba parents.
Her father, Femi Adegoke, was a GP and her mother, Feyi Adegoke, was a professor of physiology.
Badenoch spent her childhood living in Lagos, Nigeria, and in the United States, where her mother lectured.
Later at the age of 16, she returned to the UK to live with a friend of her mother’s owing to the deteriorating political and economic situation in Nigeria, which had affected her family.
Although a British citizen and born in the UK, during her parliamentary maiden speech Badenoch stated that she was “to all intents and purposes a first-generation immigrant.”
The combative former equalities minister faces the daunting task of reuniting a divided and weakened party that was emphatically removed from power in July after 14 years in charge.
“We have to be honest about the fact we made mistakes” and “let standards slip”, she said.
“It is time to get down to business, it is time to renew.”
She will become the official leader of the opposition and face off against Labour’s Keir Starmer in the House of Commons every Wednesday for the traditional prime minister’s questions.
