Kemi Badenoch wins Conservative leadership contest, pitching party to the right after blowout UK election loss

Analysis by Rob Picheta, CNN

(CNN) — Britain’s humbled Conservative Party elected Kemi Badenoch as its new leader on Saturday, turning to a right-wing favorite who has railed against identity politics, transgender rights and state spending to rebuild its reputation after a devastating election defeat.

Badenoch defeated Robert Jenrick in a vote of party members by 53,806 votes to 41,000, after a months-long contest to replace Rishi Sunak as leader. She’s the first Black woman to lead a major British political party.

Her selection all but ensures a rightward shift to Britain’s political discourse over the next several years, and creates a jarring stylistic clash between the new opposition leader and Keir Starmer, Labour’s serious and straightlaced prime minister.

Taking the podium, Badenoch said it was “the most enormous honor to be elected” as leader for “the party that has given me so much.”

She outlined the tasks ahead to the Tory faithful: Hold the Labour government to account and prepare for government with “a clear plan.” She added that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was “discovering all too late the perils of not having such a plan.”

Badenoch continued that the party needed to be honest “about the fact that we made mistakes, honest about the fact that we let standards slip.”

Concluding her remarks, the new Tory leader said: “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. It is time to get down to business. It is time to renew.”

Badenoch, who relishes confrontation and has received muted support from her own lawmakers in her various moves for the leadership, has leant into US-style cultural clashes on a swathe of topics, inspiring grassroots members on the Conservatives’ right-wing in the process.

Her task now is to revive a party still coming to terms with its worst ever election result. The Tories were dumped from government in a July general election, going from 372 to 121 seats in the process, reflecting public anger over their management of the economy, crime, immigration and standards in public life.

Both candidates had insisted that the Tories can return to power at the next election, which will take place in 2029 or earlier. But it will be a tall order for a bloc still tainted by an era that ended in catastrophe, and Badenoch’s own involvement in the failed governments of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak may prove an impediment.

And while Saturday’s result finally ends an extended period of limbo at the head of the party, it will do nothing to quiet a cacophony of competing voices about where the Conservatives should plant their flag.

A contentious campaign

Two Conservatives contested this election, but many in the Labour party feel like they won it.

The leadership contest was billed as a referendum on the party’s future, and whether it throws its energy towards winning back voters lost to the center or to the right.

But the answer was settled when two sparsely tested right-wingers progressed to the final members-only vote, after a divided party exiled every moderate and self-styled unifier from the race. Badenoch, who has been described as difficult to work with by some in the party, won the backing of only 42 Conservative MPs before the vote went to members.

Badenoch and Jenrick made dueling, populist appeals to members during their campaigns, with the latter more robustly promising to focus his attention on regaining right-leaning voters primarily concerned about rising migration to Britain.

Neither are particularly well-known to most Britons, though Badenoch achieved greater prominence while a minister, frequently getting dragged into contentious debates with journalists.

Badenoch, a Nigerian-raised former banker, served as minister in the equalities, business, housing and trade departments while the Conservatives were in office. She becomes the fourth female leader of the Conservatives, a dividing line with Labour, which has only been led by men.

Badenoch has defended the actions of the British empire and opposed critical race theory, which she has claimed is becoming commonplace in British institutions like schools and hospital trusts. She sought to change Britain’s equality law to define sex as biological, prompting criticism from trans rights groups.

And during her campaign, she received unwelcome headlines after claiming statutory maternity pay is “excessive” and joking that up to 10% of Britain’s 500,000 civil servants “should be in prison.”

Badenoch was born in Britain and returned to the country as a teenager after stints in Nigeria and the US, briefly working in McDonald’s as a teenager and later training in computer engineering. In an interview with the Spectator in 2022, she said her conservatism developed while at university, as a “reaction to very spoilt, entitled, privileged, the metropolitan elites-in-training” she says she encountered there.

Her compelling background and unapologetic language make her well-placed to work to rebuild the party’s right flank, which collapsed in the wake of failed promises to lower both legal and illegal migration to Britain. The populist Reform UK party, led by career rabble-rouser Nigel Farage, tore into the Conservative vote share in the July election, appealing to lifelong Tory voters who were concerned about arrivals to the country.

But the Tories were decimated on two fronts, and Badenoch has made fewer appeals to the traditional, more affluent and more pro-European Britons who abandoned the party for Labour and the Liberal Democrats, another party circling the Tories in parliament.

A divided party

Badenoch, who has been described as abrasive by some of those who have worked alongside her, admitted to the BBC this week that she may temper her approach if elected, telling the corporation: “I have to be mindful that I have a higher tolerance for things than others, and I think part of being a leader is being able to calibrate so that you can help manage other people.”

Though an avowed early Brexit supporter, Badenoch has softened her rhetoric towards Europe, drawing a contrast with Jenrick by pledging to collaborate with the European Union. She has not ruled out nor committed to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, the entente that became a bogeyman among some Conservatives after it prevented government attempts to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

That has for years been a Rubicon between mainstream Conservatives and their more radical colleagues; a public referendum on the issue would be painful and heated, much as the Brexit vote in 2016 was, and the move would further isolate Britain from Europe at a time when even leading Brexiteers have struggled to articulate the successes of the project.

On policy, however, Badenoch is sure to drag the opposition party to the right. She has championed moves to remove regulation and reduce the size of the state, and she has proudly described her “hard-nosed view on immigration,” writing in the Telegraph in September that not all cultures are “equally valid.”

Labour has been relaxed, both publicly and privately, over the outcome of the race. One Labour lawmaker told CNN this week that “neither will last two years” – but that Badenoch was “marginally more of a threat” than Jenrick because she can “think outside the box on issues.”

Starmer’s first months in power have not been seamless, but Labour’s first Budget, revealed on Wednesday, allowed it to define its economic priorities and further strike a contrast with a Conservative group that most voters still associate with chaos and in-fighting.

Still, Badenoch will take heart from Labour’s tepid support among the public; the party won just a third of voters, but nearly-two thirds of seats, at the election, and Starmer’s approval ratings have quickly dropped since he took power.

Badenoch’s first priority will be to define herself before Labour does. An awkwardly timed leadership contest will be immediately overshadowed by the US presidential election on Tuesday; Badenoch will face off against Starmer in Prime Minister’s Questions for the first time on Wednesday.

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CNN’s Lauren Said-Moorhouse contributed reporting.