The British Conservative Party chose the 44-year-old Kemi Badenochformer Minister of Industry, daughter of Nigerian parents and exponent of the pro-Brexit internal right, as its new leader in place of Rishi Sunak after the electoral defeat of 4 July. Badenoch, an admirer on some of Donald Trump’s dossiers and intending to become in the next elections the first black aspiring prime minister of any political force in the history of the United Kingdom, overtook the 42-year-old anti-immigration super hawk Robert Jenrick in the final ballot decided by the vote of the members , as certified by the results that remain known today.
According to the figures announced by the deputy Bob Blackman, president of the 1922 committee that manages the internal elections of the Tories, Badenoch obtained almost 54,000 votes against Jenrick’s 41,388, out of a total of over 130,000 voters who expressed their preference online or by post: equal to 72.8% of approximately 170,000 eligible members. Both Blackman and the party president, Richard Fuellerthanked the base for their participation, the 7 candidates in total who entered the running – and were gradually skimmed in the preliminary ballots of the parliamentary group before the run-off – as well as the outgoing leader and former prime minister Rishi Sunak. Not without underlining the extent of the challenge for rebuilding consensus for the Tory cause, after the electoral defeat in July recognized as “devastating”. Kemi Badenoch did the same, addressing the audience of fellow party members for a short, emotional acceptance speech.
The newly elected leader, at the registry office Olukemi Olufunto Adegokemarried Badenoch, extended her message of gratitude to her banker husband Hamish, present in the front row, and then turned to her opponent Jenrick – with whom we have “very little reason to disagree”, she underlined – promising him an important role in the party in the “years to come”. He then defined it as “an honor” to be able to serve “the party that I love and that has given me so much”, committing himself to repaying its “debt”. Our fundamental tasks – he continued – are now to “play the role of the opposition of Her Majesty’, after 14 years in power, calling the Labor government of Keir Starmer “to answer” for one’s actions; but also that of «preparing in the coming years to return to government» and of presenting oneself at the next elections «with a credible plan» for the future of the country: that plan which in his words Starmer, struggling in the latest polls and struggling with the backlash of a first financial record on the tax front, “he is realizing too late that he doesn’t have”. The reply from a Labor spokeswoman was blunt, dismissing both Badenoch and Jenrick as veterans of governments that contributed to giving the country “14 years of decline and chaos” and who “haven’t learned their lesson”.