The anti-woke warrior who ‘became working class’ by flipping burgers at McDonald’s: the story of Kemi Badenoch’s rise to become leader of the Conservative Party

Most Tory MPs privately acknowledge that electing Kemi Badenoch poses a risk – even those who have publicly supported her. They are aware of her reputation for picking fights in empty rooms and her “straightforward” approach to social interaction, which is often confused with arrogance and rudeness.

But they also see her qualities: outspokenness, fearlessness and a strong belief system that reminds many of Margaret Thatcher.

Ultimately, this is what gave her the edge over her opponent Robert Jenrick as the vote moved to the party’s grassroots level.

Mr Jenrick ran a better election campaign but ultimately failed to shake his reputation as “Robert Generic”, a white, male Tory identikit. As with Rishi Sunak, his rags-to-riches story was one in which subsequent wealth (he is a lawyer married to an older and even more successful lawyer) eclipsed the rags.

Ms Badenoch was born in a private Catholic maternity hospital in Wimbledon and grew up in Nigeria, where her father was a GP and her mother a physiology teacher. Her British passport gave her the opportunity to leave the country when its economy collapsed in the 1990s: her parents sent her at age 16 to live with a family friend in Morden, south London, where she went to a local college to take her A-levels. level.

During the leadership contest, she said it was the period when she “became working class” – having been born into a middle-class family – by taking a job at McDonald’s. She said: “There’s humility there… toilets had to be cleaned, burgers had to be flipped, money had to be dealt with.”

Ms Badenoch, who spoke English as a second language after Yoruba and describes herself as a “first-generation immigrant”, says her time studying computer engineering at the University of Sussex pushed her towards Conservative politics.

Surrounded by left-wing students whom she describes as “snot-nosed middle-class North Londoners who couldn’t get into Oxbridge”, she says she was shocked by how “high-minded” they talked about Africa.

She said: “Those stupid left-wing white kids didn’t know what they were talking about. It instinctively made me think, “These are not my people.”

After working as a software engineer and deputy director at Coutts bank, her breakthrough came when she was appointed digital director at The Spectator magazine. There she was supported by then editor Fraser Nelson and came under the influence of Michael Gove, who had just succeeded Mr Nelson in the editor’s chair.

Both Mr Gove and his friend Dougie Smith, the Tory shadow aide, soon identified Ms Badenoch as the party’s future leader and urged her to embrace the anti-woke beliefs that so resonated with Tory members.

She entered Parliament in 2017 in the safe Tory seat of Saffron Walden, immediately aligning herself with the pro-Brexit wing of the party as Theresa May endured an endless battle with the EU to secure a deal: in her maiden speech she described the Leave vote from the EU as “the greatest ever vote of confidence in the United Kingdom project” and took an influential position on the executive committee of the 1922 Conservative Committee.

She was given her first government role as junior minister for children and families by Boris Johnson when he became prime minister in 2019.

Her time as equalities minister gave her a platform to attack identity politics, clash with civil servants over her insistence that public buildings have separate men’s and women’s toilets, and complain about the way her three people live mixed-race children with her banker husband Hamish Badenoch. was considered exclusively black. She also made headlines with her outspoken defense of the controversial Sewell report, commissioned in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, which found the UK was not an institutionally racist country.

She lost out to Liz Truss in the race to succeed Mr Johnson as leader but entered the Cabinet as international trade secretary, a post she retained under Mr Sunak.

Ms Badenoch maintains her reputation as an aggressive person, saying last week: “I am a very abrasive person. I am very outspoken and very confident. I’m not a wallflower.

When Doctor Who actor David Tennant told an awards ceremony he wanted to wake up in a world where she “no longer existed” and wanted her to “shut up”, Mrs Badenoch said she would not be silenced by a “rich man” . “left-handed, white male celebrity” attacks “the only black woman in government.”

Yesterday Mr Johnson gave immediate and powerful support for her leadership, saying she would bring “a much-needed boost of energy and energy to the Conservative Party”.

But it also makes mistakes – which is why it poses a risk. Within days at the Tory party conference in Birmingham, early in the election campaign, she managed to argue that maternity pay was “excessive” and said some civil servants were so bad that 10 per cent of them should be sacked. in prison.

Tory members have calculated that the risks of her election are outweighed by the rewards: her ability to neutralize the appeal of Nigel Farage’s reform UK and set aside the overt goals of Sir Keir Starmer’s bumbling administration.