Kemi Badenoch, New Leader of the U.K.s Tories, Vows to Make the Party More Conservative

Britain’s Conservative Party announced on Saturday that it had selected Kemi Badenoch as its leader, putting a charismatic, often combative, right-wing firebrand at the helm of a party that suffered a crushing election defeat in July.Ms.Badenoch, 44, whose parents were immigrants from Nigeria, becomes the first Black woman to head a party that has had three other female leaders — Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss.

She succeeds Rishi Sunak, who became the first nonwhite British prime minister after taking over the Tories, Britain’s oldest party, in 2022.There is no guarantee, despite her swift ascent, that Ms.Badenoch will ever get to 10 Downing Street.

The Labour Party’s landslide victory gave it a huge majority in Parliament and the Tories face at least four years in opposition before the next election is due.While the Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer, has gotten off to a shaky start, his party remains more popular than the Tories, who left voters frustrated and exhausted after 14 turbulent years in government.In a lively, occasionally bitter, leadership contest, Ms.Badenoch edged out Robert Jenrick, another former cabinet minister, by a vote of 53,806 to 41,388 among the party’s 130,000 or so dues-paying members.

She and Mr.Jenrick emerged as the two finalists in a multiple-round contest that left the members with an unexpectedly narrow choice of two candidates from the party’s right.Ms.

Badenoch has vowed to rebuild the Tory Party on more authentically conservative foundations, saying her training as a computer engineer had taught her how to fix problems.She speaks often of “first principles” like freedom and individual responsibility.

And she has not hesitated to wade into thorny issues like transgender rights or Britain’s colonial legacy, deploring “woke” ideology and “nasty identity politics.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your pat...