Kemi Badenoch is the leader of the Conservative Party and serves as leader of the opposition. She is the MP for North West Essex, having first been elected to parliament for the predecessor seat of Saffron Walden in June 2017.

At the 2024 general election, Badenoch received 19,360 votes in North West Essex, representing 35.6% of the vote share. The Labour candidate, Issy Waite, received 16,750 votes (30.8%), while the Reform UK candidate, Grant StClair-Armstrong, secured 7,668 votes (14.1%). Kemi Badenoch was duly elected with a majority of 2,610 votes. (StClair-Armstrong resigned from Reform UK before polling day but remained listed as the party’s candidate on the ballot paper).

The North West Essex constituency is located in Essex and includes the town of Saffron Walden. It is largely successor to the former Saffron Walden constituency, a safe Conservative seat previously represented by Alan Haselhurst and, historically, by former Conservative chancellor Rab Butler.

Political Career

Badenoch became leader of the Conservative Party and leader of the opposition on 2 November 2024. The leadership election was triggered by Sunak’s resignation after the party suffered a landslide defeat at the 2024 general election. The Conservatives were reduced to just 121 MPs – the worst result in the party’s history.

On 10 July 2024, speaking at the first shadow cabinet meeting since the election, Badenoch accused senior Conservatives of failing to understand the “enormity” of the defeat. She said that Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, appeared to be having a “very public” nervous breakdown, and referred to Craig Williams – the Sunak aide who admitted placing a bet on the election date – as a “buffoon”.

Badenoch argued that the Conservatives saw “too much nodding along in the room and arguments outside it” during its tenure in government.

The 2024 leadership race, which officially commenced on 24 July, spanned more than four months.

Badenoch defeated Robert Jenrick in the final members’ ballot with 53,806 votes (56.5%) compared to Jenrick’s 41,388 votes (43.5%). It came after further candidates, including Mel Stride, Priti Patel and James Cleverly, were ejected in the Conservative MP voting stage.

Badenoch’s margin of victory, however – 12,418 votes – made it the narrowest win of the five contests (2001, 2005, 2019 and summer 2022) held since the party changed its rules to allow members the final say.

In her victory speech, Badenoch said it was “the most enormous honour to be elected” to the role leading the “party that has given me so much.” She paid tribute to Jenrick, who she said had run a “great campaign”.

Badenoch’s election in 2024 made her the first Black leader of any major UK political party and the fourth woman to lead the Conservatives (after Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss).

Keir Starmer, the prime minister, welcomed Badenoch to her new position. “The first Black leader of a Westminster party is a proud moment for our country”, he said. “I look forward to working with you and your party in the interests of the British people.”

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As Conservative leader, Badenoch appointed her shadow cabinet on 5 November 2024. Notably, several of Badenoch’s rivals in the leadership contest were given prominent roles, such as Stride as shadow chancellor, Patel as shadow foreign secretary, and Jenrick as Shadow Justice Secretary.

Upon taking over as Tory leader, Badenoch insisted there was no “quick fix” following the party’s defeat in July’s general election. In an interview with BBC Radio 4‘s Today programme, she said the public “kicked out” the Conservatives because the party was not trusted and did not deliver, adding building trust is “something that takes a while”.

At the 2025 local elections, the Conservatives under Badenoch’s leadership suffered widespread losses, losing control of 16 councils across England. The party won only 319 seats. Reform UK under Nigel Farage, meanwhile, won 677 seats – accounting for around 41% of the total up for election. The Liberal Democrats won more seats than the Conservatives (370) for the second set of local elections in a row.

Badenoch conducted her first shadow cabinet reshuffle in July 2025.

A series of Conservative frontbenchers defected to Reform UK in 2025/2026. Danny Kruger, a shadow minister, defected to Reform UK in September 2025. On 15 January, Badenoch announced that Jenrick had been suspended from the party, citing “clear, irrefutable evidence” of the shadow justice secretary’s intention to defect. Later that day, Farage unveiled Jenrick as the latest Reform UK MP. Suella Braverman joined Reform UK on 26 January.

Badenoch served in the interim/caretaker shadow cabinet as shadow secretary of state for housing, communities and local government from July 2024 until November 2024.

Prior to the 2024 general election, which saw the Conservatives ejected from government, Badenoch held several senior government positions. Most recently, she was secretary of state for business and trade (February 2023 – July 2024) and minister for women and equalities (October 2022 – July 2024) under Rishi Sunak.

Under Liz Truss, she was appointed as secretary of state for international trade in September 2022. This represented her first cabinet-level role.

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Badenoch had stood in the July-September 2022 Conservative leadership contest. At the time, she was seen as a combative culture warrior. Having gained significant momentum among the party’s right wing, she was eliminated in the fourth parliamentary ballot on 19 July after receiving 59 votes. Among her supporters was Michael Gove, the longstanding cabinet minister. With the help of Gove, a veritable “big beast”, Badenoch firmly established herself as a rising star in the Conservative Party.

Under Boris Johnson, Badenoch was minister of state at the department for levelling up, housing and communities (September 2021 – July 2022) and minister of state for equalities (February 2020 – July 2022). She resigned from government in July 2022 as part of the mass walkout of ministers that ultimately forced Boris Johnson to announce his own resignation.

Notably, Badenoch resigned by way of a joint letter, co-written with Alex Burghart, Neil O’Brien, Lee Rowley and Julia Lopez. Like Badenoch, the letter’s signatories were considered “rising stars” in the Conservative Party.

The letter read: “It has become increasingly clear that the government cannot function given the issues that have come to light and the way in which they have been handled. In good faith, we must ask that, for the good of the Party and the country, you step aside.”

Today, Rowley, Lopez and Burghart are all considered members of Badenoch’s inner circle, having backed the Conservative leader in both the summer 2022 and 2024 contests.

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Badenoch also served as exchequer secretary to the Treasury (February 2020 – September 2021) and parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department for Education (July 2019 – February 2020). She was a vice-chair of the Conservative Party from January 2018 to July 2019.

In 2018, Badenoch admitted that she hacked former Labour MP Harriet Harman’s website a decade earlier. The Conservative MP revealed details of the incident in a lighthearted interview with the Core Politics Youtube channel.

Asked what the “naughtiest” thing she had ever done was, Badenoch said: “About 10 years ago I hacked into… a Labour MP’s website and I changed all the stuff in there to say nice things about Tories.”

It was reported that Badenoch gained access to Harman’s website by guessing a password rather than “real hacking”. Badenoch later told the Mail on Sunday it was “a foolish prank over a decade ago, for which I apologise”.

Harman served as minister for women between 1997 and 2010 under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. She is a former deputy leader of the Labour Party. In a post to Twitter (later X) in April 2018, Harman said she had accepted Badenoch’s apology.

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Badenoch has served as a member of the House of Commons justice committee (2017-2019) and the public accounts committee (2020-2021).

Badenoch delivered her maiden speech on 19 July 2017 during a debate on Brexit. In it, she described the UK as a “beacon”.

She stated: “I believe that the vote for Brexit was the greatest ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom: that vision of a global Britain to which the Minister referred. It is a project that, as a young African girl, I dreamed about becoming part of”.

She added: “believe in free markets and free trade. But there is more to conservatism than economic liberalism – there is respect for the rule of law; personal responsibility; freedom of speech and of association; and opportunity through meritocracy.

“Those freedoms are being subtly eroded in an era when emotion and feeling are prized above reason and logic. It is those freedoms that I will seek to defend during my time in this House.”

Badenoch cited Winston Churchill, Airey Neave, and Margaret Thatcher as her political heroes.

Before entering parliament, Badenoch was a Conservative member of the London Assembly from 2015 to 2017, serving as the GLA Conservative spokesperson for the economy.

Political Views

Badenoch has described Britain as one of the best places in the world to live as a black person and criticised the idea of institutional racism being pervasive in the UK, stating in the Evening Standard that people “pick on one bad experience, blow it up and say: ‘This is institutional racism’“.

She added: “That’s not to say race relations are perfect, but [Britain] is as good as it gets.”

Badenoch is a prominent critic of the government’s net zero policies. In a speech as Conservative leader, delivered in March 2025, Badenoch said net zero cannot be achieved by 2050 “without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”.

On the first day of the Conservative Party’s annual conference in 2024, Badenoch came in for criticism for suggesting that maternity pay was “excessive”.

She told Times Radio: “Maternity pay varies, depending on who you work for – but statutory maternity pay is a function of tax, tax comes from people who are working. We’re taking from one group of people and giving to another. This, in my view, is excessive.

“Businesses are closing, businesses are not starting in the UK, because they say that the burden of regulation is too high.”

Despite her attempts to clarify the remarks, rival leadership candidates Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly issued thinly veiled criticisms.

Tugendhat said: “I’m afraid I don’t know the context of her comments, but I do know that it is incredibly important that women have the ability to choose how to live their lives.”

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Leadership elections and loyalty

Tory leadership 2022 (II): Badenoch supported Rishi Sunak’s candidacy in the Conservative Party’s October 2022 leadership election. The contest was triggered by the resignation of Liz Truss after just 45 days in office, following the financial and political tailspin triggered by her “mini-budget”.

Sunak, the former chancellor, had finished second to Truss in the previous contest. Unlike the summer contest, this election featured an expedited process requiring each candidate to secure at least 100 nominations from MPs to proceed. Sunak, having emerged as the clear frontrunner, was declared leader of the Conservative Party unopposed on 24 October.

Badenoch chose not to run in the second Conservative leadership contest of 2022; her support bolstered Sunak’s candidacy. She described the erstwhile chancellor as “the serious, honest leader we need”.

In an article for the Times newspaper, she wrote: “I have, on occasion, been a member of the Boris Johnson fan club. Even when I resigned from his government, I acknowledged his many strengths. He has been an asset to the country during some very difficult times.

“However, I am an even bigger fan of Margaret Thatcher, a formidable politician who did not duck difficult decisions, was extremely prudent and successfully carried out major reforms by winning the argument and taking the public with her.”

She added: “Mrs Thatcher won the public’s trust and three elections in a row by making it about us, not about her. We need someone who can do the same. I believe that person is Rishi Sunak.”

Johnson confidence vote: In June 2022, Badenoch publicly declared their loyalty to the prime minister, Boris Johnson, ahead of a vote of no confidence in his leadership. The vote was triggered by discontent within the parliamentary party following the “partygate” scandal and the publication of the Sue Gray report. While the prime minister ultimately won the vote, the scale of the rebellion against him, with 148 of his own MPs voting to remove him, severely weakened his authority and presaged his resignation the following month.

Tory leadership 2019: Badenoch supported Michael Gove for the party’s leadership in 2019. The election was triggered by the resignation of Theresa May following her inability to secure a Brexit deal acceptable to Parliament.

Gove, then the environment secretary, reached the final three of the parliamentary ballots. He was ultimately eliminated in the fifth ballot on 20 June, receiving 75 votes – just two fewer than Jeremy Hunt.

Factional identity and party tradition

The Free Market Forum: Badenoch was listed as a supporter of the Free Market Forum (FMF) of Conservative MPs and peers. The group, co-chaired by Dehenna Davison and Greg Smith in the 2019-2024 parliament, set out to “encourage free market thinking, winning over the unpersuaded and providing intellectual firepower and a public platform to proponents of classical liberalism.” Founded in 2021, the forum, associated with the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), was seen as aligned with the economic policies of the Liz Truss government.

Brexit and Europe

Brexit referendum: Badenoch supported leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and therefore agreed with a majority of constituents, 51.2% of whom voted to leave.

In a January 2025 speech, billed as her first major intervention since becoming Conservative leader, Badenoch criticised her predecessors for mishandling Brexit – saying leaving the EU without a growth plan was a “mistake”.

Badenoch said: “We announced that we would leave the European Union before we had a plan for growth outside the EU.

“We made it the law that we would deliver net zero carbon emissions by 2050. And only then did we start thinking about how we would do that.

“We announced that we would lower immigration, but immigration kept going up. These mistakes were made because we told people what they wanted to hear first and then tried to work it out later.

“That is going to stop under my leadership. If we are going to turn our country around, we’re going to have to say some things that aren’t easy to hear.”

Assisted dying

Badenoch voted against the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, better known as the assisted dying bill, at both second reading (November 2024) and third reading (June 2025).

In a statement setting out her position, Badenoch said she could not support the bill due to concerns about safeguards.

She said: “During my time as a government minister, it became clear to me that our healthcare system is not able to cope with complex issues requiring serious safeguarding. I learnt this when clinicians, parents, whistle-blowers, and children came to me raising serious concerns of safeguarding failures in our gender identity development service.”

Badenoch added: “We need to recognise that our political system is broken. We cannot keep agreeing to things, however well intentioned, without a clear plan for how they will be delivered in practice – with all the implications fully considered.”

Social values and conscience issues

Abortion decriminalisation (2025): Badenoch voted against a backbench amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that sought to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales in June 2025. The amendment, which was passed by a majority of 242 votes, removed women from the threat of prosecution for ending a pregnancy at any stage. As an issue of conscience, MPs were allowed to vote according to their personal beliefs.

Badenoch has expressed scepticism about critical race theory and what she terms “gender ideology”.

She welcomed the April 2025 supreme court ruling that the legal definition of a woman should be based on biological sex. Badenoch went on to accuse the prime minister, Keir Starmer, of lacking “moral courage” on transgender issues.

In a typically combative performance at PMQs, Badenoch said the prime minister didn’t “have the balls” to say where he stood and likened him to a “weather vane”.

“This is a choice between a Conservative Party that stood up for common sense and a Labour Party that bent the knee to every passing fad”, she said.

“This is a question about moral courage, about doing the right thing even when it is difficult.”

In a speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in November 2023, she argued against distractions like debates over pronouns, stating they detract from core issues like the rise of China. She also stated the government was challenging “activist groups like Stonewall” for taking institutions onto the “wrong track”.

Foreign policy and security

Sanctioned (Russia): In April 2022, Badenoch was among the group of MPs placed on a sanctions list by the Russian government. The measure barred them from entering Russia and was presented by Moscow as a retaliatory response to the UK’s stance on the invasion of Ukraine.

Before Politics

Born Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke on 2 January 1980 in Wimbledon, London, to parents of Nigerian Yoruba heritage. Her father was a GP and her mother a professor of physiology. She grew up primarily in Lagos, Nigeria, and also spent time in the United States.

She returned to the UK aged 16, studying A-Levels at Phoenix College in Morden. She worked part-time at McDonald’s while studying. Badenoch studied computer systems engineering at the University of Sussex, graduating with an MEng degree in 2003. She later studied law part-time at Birkbeck, University of London, receiving an LLB in 2009.

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Her early career was as a software engineer at Logica. She later worked as an associate director at Coutts bank and then as Head of Digital for The Spectator magazine. She joined the Conservative Party in 2005.

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Personal Life

Badenoch is married to Hamish Badenoch, whom she met in 2009 and married in 2012.

Hamish Badenoch works at Deutsche Bank and is a former Conservative councillor for Merton Council. They have three children: two daughters and a son.

In August 2025, Badenoch stated she had not renewed her Nigerian passport since the early 2000s. She no longer identifies as Nigerian, identifying instead primarily as Yoruba.

She told the Spectator in December 2024: “I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where the Islamism is, those were our ethnic enemies.”

Trivia

Kemi Badenoch’s husband, Hamish, campaigned for remain in the 2016 EU referendum, while she campaigned for Leave.

Hamish stood for parliament as a Northern Ireland Conservative candidate in the 2015 general election; he won 132 votes (0.4%) in the constituency of Foyle. In a Spectator article, published July 2023, Hamish wrote that he grew up in the “one-nation tradition of the Tory party”, adding that he was “‘wet’ on pretty much everything”.

Hamish Badenoch added: “I even campaigned for Remain when Kemi backed Brexit. My greatest electoral victory was becoming a councillor in Merton, south London. I stood for parliament in Northern Ireland as the candidate for Foyle in 2015 and outperformed expectations when I won a whole 132 votes.

“My political ambitions ended when I was booted off the candidates list – by Kemi. She was a vice-chair of the party and wanted to avoid a conflict of interests.”

Badenoch is reportedly a keen chess and poker player and enjoys science fiction, particularly the novels of Terry Pratchett.

Badenoch was described as the “future of the party” over 20 years ago when she met then-Conservative MP and former minister Sir Conor Burns. Burns is said to have passed on Badenoch’s details to the Tory chairman to ensure she was placed on the candidates list for forthcoming general elections.

In an article for ConservativeHome, published January 2025, Burns said: “I met Kemi just over 20 years ago. The then Miss Adegoke was as strikingly interesting as she remains today. It was after spending time with her at a [Conservative Future] event that I got in touch with the then Party Chairman to pass on her details telling him he should get her in and put her on the candidates list. I described her then as ‘the future of the Party’…

“However, I do not resile from repeating it. I believe there is something special about her. She is authentic, open and honest. And I can attest from personal experience that one could not have a better friend than Kemi in tough times.”