UK Conservatives pick Kemi Badenoch as new leader, first black woman to head big British party

LONDON (AP) — Britain's Conservative Party on Saturday elected outspoken lawmaker Kemi Badenoch as its new leader as it tries to rebound from a crushing election defeat that ended 14 years in power.

The first black woman to lead a major British political party, Badenoch (pronounced BADE-enock) defeated rival candidate Robert Jenrick in a vote of almost 100,000 members of the right-of-centre Conservatives.

She got 53,806 votes in the online and postal ballot of party members, to Jenrick's 41,388.

Badenoch replaces former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who in July led the Conservatives to their worst election result since 1832.

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. She said the party's job was to hold the Labour government to account, and to craft pledges and a plan for government.

Addressing the party's election drubbing, she said “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, 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,” Badenoch said.

A business secretary in Sunak's 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. Like her rival Jenrick, she has criticised multiculturalism and called for lower immigration, though unlike him she has not demanded that Britain leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

A self-proclaimed enemy of wokeness Badenoch opposes identity politics, gender-neutral bathrooms and government plans to reduce UK carbon emissions. During the leadership campaign she drew criticism for saying that “not all cultures are equally valid,” and for suggesting that maternity pay was excessive.

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