By Seyi Babalola
Britain’s Conservative Party chose Kemi Badenoch as its new leader on Saturday as it seeks to recover from a catastrophic election setback that ended 14 years in office.
Badenoch, the first Black woman to lead a major British political party, beat opposition MP Robert Jenrick in a vote by almost 100,000 right-of-center Conservatives.
Most strikingly, perhaps, Badenoch is the first major party leader to identify as a “first-generation immigrant”.
Daily Sun brings to you all you need to know about Kemi Badenoch:
Kemi Badenoch was born Olukemi Adegoke in London in 1980 to well-off Nigerian parents — a doctor and an academic — and spent much of her childhood in the West African country.
Aged 16, she returned to Britain to live with a family friend in Wimbledon and study A-levels while working part-time at McDonald’s.
She worked part-time at McDonalds while completing school, then studied computer systems engineering at the University of Sussex. She later got a law degree and worked in financial services.
Badenoch has described her childhood in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, as “middle-class” when compared to her “very poor” surroundings. Her father Femi worked in the city as a GP while her mother Feyi was a professor of physiology at the University of Lagos.
Her experience of Nigeria’s economic and social upheavals shaped her political outlook.
Badenoch met her husband, investment banker Hamish Badenoch, in her local South London Conservative association in 2009. They married in 2012 and have two daughters and a son.
She was elected to the London Assembly in 2015 and to Parliament in 2017.
She held a series of government posts in the 2019-22 government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson before becoming part of a mass ministerial exodus in July 2022 over a series of ethics scandals that triggered Johnson’s downfall.
She was appointed trade secretary in the 49-day government of Prime Minister Liz Truss, and business secretary under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
She held onto her seat in Parliament in July’s national election, which saw the Labour Party win a huge majority and the Conservatives reduced to 121 lawmakers in the 650-seat House of Commons.
Badenoch defeated rival lawmaker Robert Jenrick in a vote of almost 100,000 members of the right-of-centre Conservatives to emerge as the UK’s Conservatives Leader and also the first Black Woman to Head a Major British Party.
She replaces former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who in July led the Conservatives to their worst election result since 1832.
