Conventional wisdom suggests the frontrunner in the Tory leadership contest never wins. In defiance of that principle, Kemi Badenoch – the bookies’ favourite since January – is now the leader of the Conservative Party.
Badenoch beat Robert Jenrick (53,806 votes to 41,388) by a slightly smaller margin than Liz Truss’s triumph over Rishi Sunak in September 2022. Though, it is worth noting that Truss received 28,000 more votes than Badenoch. Turnout this time was lower, at 72.8%. There was also nervous laughter in the room when it was revealed over 600 ballot papers had been rejected, 45 for voting for more than one candidate.
Bob Blackman, the chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs who was overseeing the contest, congratulated the 44-year-old MP for North West Essex and pointed out the historic nature of the result. “Isn’t it great we’ve got another female leader, and isn’t it great we’re the first party to have a black leader?” he said. Then, in a not-so-subtle jibe at Rachel Reeves and her Budget speech on Wednesday, he hailed “another glass ceiling shattered”.
When Badenoch herself took to the stage, in a suit of Tory-blue, her remarks were brief and gracious. Offered 20 minutes for her victory speech, she used barely five of them. She was uncharacteristically conciliatory towards her opponent (with whom relations have grown increasingly tense as the contest has dragged on), telling Jenrick “you and I know that we don’t actually disagree on very much”. She made a point of thanking Rishi Sunak too. Her message to the party was the same as throughout her campaign: “It is time to get down to business, it is time to renew.”
What renewing actually means is unclear. Badenoch was policy-light during the leadership race, refusing to set out an agenda and instead promising to rebuild the party from scratch from Conservative principles. She has a clear worldview about what has gone wrong with both the party and the country – identifying as the source of the problem Britain’s unelected institutions and governance structures – but little in the way of concrete plans as to how to fix it. This was enough to win over the members. How it shapes the party in opposition, with its rump of just 121 MPs, is another matter.
Her job now is twofold: put a broken party back together, and provide meaningful opposition to the Labour government. We’ll get a clearer sense of direction when Badenoch starts to appoint her shadow cabinet (she has said there will be a role for Jenrick, and for the rest of the leadership candidates, although they might not all want to accept them), and will get to see her in action against Keir Starmer for the first time at PMQs on Wednesday. Supporters during the campaign flagged her ability to seize headlines and set the narrative with her confrontational style – crucial for an opposition in crisis. The rebuilding, however, will be a tougher challenge.
“It is time to tell the truth,” a victorious Badenoch told her audience. Is it a truth the Conservative party is ready to hear?
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