Kemi Badenoch’s husband, Hamish, deployed a zinger of a chat-up line when he tried to woo his future wife.
He told her she possessed the “greatest political mind of her generation”. Britain, and the Conservative party, is about to find out if Hamish was right.
The new leader of the opposition lists World War II escapee and key Thatcher ally Airey Neave among her top political heroes. She describes his escape from Colditz as “probably the coolest thing any British politician has ever done”.
Mrs Badenoch must now plot the Conservatives’ escape from a political disaster zone. She faces the twin challenges of uniting a decimated group of MPs who are notorious for defenestrating their leaders while convincing voters that Britain would be better off under a Tory Government.
She has already achieved the improbable. Did anyone who knew Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke when she worked as a teenager working in McDonald’s – she has described how her hair “smelled of fries” – expect her to lead the party of Disraeli and Churchill?
The 44-year-old mum of three told Sunday Express readers in the final days of the campaign that Sir Keir Starmer can be kicked out “in one term”. Tory loyalists who are impressed by her fighting spirit and undeniable stage charisma hope she will prove a human wrecking ball who can bring the Labour era to a crashing end.
One of the greatest difficulties facing a party leader in opposition is avoiding obscurity, and Mrs Badenoch will have to compete for airtime with Reform UK’s Nigel Farage and the resurgent Liberal Democrats. However, she has a proven track record of generating headlines.
A champion of single sex spaces, she is a foe of “extreme gender ideology” and has condemned how “young people were subjected to irreversible medical procedures while too vulnerable to give meaningful consent”.
Former Doctor Who star David Tennant famously described how he wanted a world where he would “wake up and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist any more”. She denounced him as a “rich, Lefty, white male celebrity” who was “blinded by ideology”.
Such high profile clashes established her as a Tory who is unafraid to take on the progressive Left.
She has a “new and growing bureaucratic class” in her sights and sees it as a major problem that “more and more jobs” are “focused around administering government rules” and not “providing goods and services in the marketplace”.
The Conservatives have never suffered from a deficit of culture warriors but Mrs Badenoch, who boasts both a masters in engineering and a law degree, impressed the Tory top brass shortly after arriving in the Commons in 2017. She won a succession of promotions under Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, rising to become Business and Trade Secretary.
Her campaigning passion is rooted in a belief that the UK is a great country and that its finest traditions must not be swept away.
Having spent much of her childhood in Nigeria and also lived in the United States, she knows what makes Britain unique.
She is confident that the “principles of the British people” are “principles of personal responsibility, citizenship, equality under the law, family and truth, are the “principles of the British people”. If she can convince voters she is more in tune with their values and aspirations than Sir Keir then she may lead the Tories out of the wilderness.
