Kemi Badenoch emerged as the new leader of the Conservatives after defeating Robert Jenrick in the party’s membership election. Results showed she won 53,806 votes to 41,388 among the party’s 130,000 or so dues-paying members.
Bob Blackman, in charge of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers, announced at an event in central London that Badenoch won just over 56 per cent of the vote, a clear, though not overwhelming, victory.
Badenoch, an MP since 2017 and former shadow housing minister, said that in order for the party to be heard after its major election defeat, “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.”
She went on: “The task that stands before us is tough but simple. Our first responsibility as His Majesty’s loyal opposition is to hold this Labor government to account. Our second is no less important. It is to prepare, over the course of the next few years, for government to ensure that by the time of the next election, we have not just a clear set of Conservative pledges that appeal to the British people, but a clear plan for how to implement them, a clear plan to change this country by changing the way that government works.”
Badenoch joined calls for Britain to reduce the recent influx of immigrants, although she shunned the strict quantitative targets adopted by Jenrick. She rejected his demand that Britain commit to withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, a post-World War II treaty, because it impedes efforts to control Britain’s borders.
There is no guarantee that, despite her rapid ascent, Badenoch will ever make it to Downing Street. Although Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer started uncertainly, his party remains more popular than the Tories, who have left voters disillusioned and exhausted after 14 tumultuous years in power.
