UK Conservative Party picks pro-Israel Kemi Badenoch as new leader
Anti-woke politician becomes first Black woman to head a major UK political party, vows to work to bring Tories back to power in wake of July’s election defeat
LONDON — Britain’s Conservative Party on Saturday elected Kemi Badenoch as its new leader as it tries to rebound from a crushing election defeat that ended 14 years in power.
Badenoch (pronounced BADE-enock) defeated rival lawmaker Robert Jenrick in a vote of almost 100,000 members of the right-of-center party. She is the first Black woman to lead a major British political party.
Badenoch replaces former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, who in July led the Conservatives to their worst election result since 1832. The Conservatives lost more than 200 seats, taking their tally down to 121.
The new leader’s daunting task is to try to restore the party’s reputation after years of division, scandal and economic tumult, hammer Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s policies on key issues including the economy and immigration, and return the Conservatives to power at the next election, due by 2029.
“The task that stands before us is tough but simple,” Badenoch said in a victory speech to a roomful of Conservative lawmakers, staff and journalists in London.
“Our first responsibility as His Majesty’s loyal opposition is to hold this Labour 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.”
A business secretary in the previous Conservative government, Badenoch was born in London to Nigerian parents and spent much of her childhood in the West African country.
The 44-year-old former software engineer depicts herself as a disruptor, arguing for a low-tax, free-market economy and pledging to “rewire, reboot and reprogram” the British state.
Israel’s ‘moral clarity’
Badenoch is regarded as a firm supporter of Israel.
After Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September, Badenoch told Sky News that the strike was “extraordinary.”
“Israel is showing moral clarity in dealing with its enemies and the enemies of the West as well,” she said.
Regarding the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, Badenoch said that “we can see that they cannot be complacent and they have to do what they need to do to defend themselves, and quite frankly to survive.”
As the UK’s International Trade Secretary in December, Badenoch resisted massive pressure to suspend or revoke arms export licenses to Israel amid its offensive against Hamas.
Ahead of the election, she wrote a letter to the Conservative Friends of Israel organization, saying: “If I am leader of the Conservative Party, we will continue to strengthen our ties with Israel and root out the tragic resurgence of antisemitism in the UK. We will be true to our values.”
She added, “We stand on the edge” of Labour “reversing” the UK’s strong relationship with Israel built by the previous Conservative government, according to the UK Jewish News.
A critic of multiculturalism and self-proclaimed enemy of wokeness, Badenoch has drawn criticism for saying recently that “not all cultures are equally valid,” and for suggesting that maternity pay was excessive.
In a race that has lasted more than three months, Conservative lawmakers reduced the field from six candidates in a series of votes before putting the final two to the wider party membership.
Jenrick, who is married to an Israeli-born lawyer and is raising his three daughters as Jewish, is considered even more vocally pro-Israel than Badenoch.
Both finalists came from the right of the party, and argued they can win voters back from Reform UK, the hard-right, anti-immigrant party led by populist politician Nigel Farage that has eaten away at Conservative support.
But the party also lost many voters to the winning party, Labour, and to the centrist Liberal Democrats, and some Conservatives worry that tacking right will lead the party away from public opinion.
