The British Conservative Party has chosen 44-year-old Kemi Badenoch, a former industry minister and daughter of Nigerian parents who is a pro-Brexit figure on the right, as its new leader to replace Rishi Sunak after the July 4 election defeat.
Badenoch, who has been an admirer of Donald Trump on some of his dossiers and is set to become the first black female prime minister of any political party in the history of the United Kingdom in the next election, beat 42-year-old anti-immigration hawk Robert Jenrick in the final run-off decided by members of parliament, as certified by the results released today.
According to the figures announced by the MP Bob Blackman, chairman of the 1922 committee that manages the Tories' internal elections, 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 the approximately 170,000 registered voters with the right to vote. Both Blackman and the party chairman, Richard Fuller, thanked the base for their participation, the 7 candidates who entered the race in total - and gradually filtered out in the preliminary scrutiny of the parliamentary group before the second round - as well as the outgoing leader and former prime minister Rishi Sunak. Not without underlining the scale 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 party comrades for a short, emotional acceptance speech. The newly elected leader, born Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke, married Badenoch, extended the 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 to disagree with", she stressed - promising him an important role in the party in the "years to come". She then called it "an honour" to be able to serve "the party that I love and that has given me so much", pledging to repay his "debt".
"Our fundamental tasks" - he continued - are now to "play the role of Her Majesty's opposition", after 14 years in power, calling Keir Starmer's Labour government "to answer" for its actions; but also to "prepare in the coming years to return to government" and to present itself at the next elections "with a credible plan" for the future of the country : that plan that in his words Starmer, struggling in the latest polls and grappling with the backlash of a record first budget on the tax front, "is realizing too late that he does not have". The response of a Labour spokeswoman was dry, who dismissed both Badenoch and Jenrick as veterans of governments that contributed to giving the country "14 years of decline and chaos"; and who "have not learned the lesson".
(Unioneonline/D)