UK Tories elect first black female leader
Kemi Badenoch has been elected as the new leader of the UK’s Conservatives in a vote on Saturday, replacing Rishi Sunak and becoming the first black woman to lead a major British political party.
Born in the UK and raised in Nigeria and the US, the 44-year-old beat leadership rival MP Robert Jenrick by 12,418 votes, according to the state broadcaster the BBC. In her victory speech, Badenoch, who became an MP in 2017 after a career in banking and IT, vowed to renew the party after it suffered its worst defeat in the general election in July.
She has stressed the need to “bring back” voters that have abandoned the Tories, claiming that the party is “critical to the success of our country.”
Badenoch insisted that, in order to be heard, the party had to be more honest and admit that it has “made mistakes” and “let standards slip” over the past 14 years in government.
The Conservatives suffered their worst-ever election defeat in July, bringing the Labour Party to power for the first time in 14 years.
Like Liz Truss and Boris Johnson before him, Sunak presided over an historic decline in Britain’s standard of living, coupled with a rise in energy costs and rampant inflation, which soared after the UK cut itself off from Russian fossil fuels in 2022.
