UK’s battered Tory party to reveal new leader

Conservative leadership candidates Kemi Badenoch (L) and Robert Jenrick (R) are bidding to replace former prime minister Rishi Sunak – Copyright AFP/File I-Hwa CHENG

James PHEBY

The UK’s Conservative party will on Saturday announce its new leader, who faces the daunting task of reuniting a divided and weakened party emphatically ousted from power in July after 14 years in charge.

“Anti-woke” candidate Kemi Badenoch is the favourite to win the vote by party members and replace former prime minister Rishi Sunak. He announced his departure as party leader after presiding over the resounding general election defeat on July 5.

Recent polls put the 44-year-old Badenoch ahead of Robert Jenrick in the two-horse race. Voting in the contest ended on Thursday.

The winner, to be announced at 11 am, will become the official leader of the opposition and face off against Labour’s Keir Starmer in the House of Commons every Wednesday for the traditional Prime Minister’s Questions. 

They will be leading a much-reduced cohort of Tory MPs in the chamber following the party’s disastrous election showing.

The new leader must plot a strategy to regain public trust while stemming the flow of support to the right-wing Reform UK party, led by Brexit figurehead Nigel Farage.

Both candidates campaigned on right-wing platforms, raising the prospect of possible future difficulties within the ranks of Tory lawmakers, which includes many centrists.   

Badenoch, born in London to Nigerian parents and raised in Lagos, has called for a return to conservative values, accusing her party of having become increasingly liberal on societal issues such as gender identity.

She said it “talked right, but governed left”. 

According to Blue Ambition, a biography written by Conservative peer Michael Ashcroft, Badenoch became “radicalised” into right-wing politics while at university in the UK.

He described her view of student activists there as the “spoiled, entitled, privileged metropolitan elite-in-training”.

– ‘Close’ –

Badenoch describes herself as a straight-talker, a trait that has caused controversy on the campaign trail.

When addressing immigration, Badenoch said “our country is not a dormitory for people to come here and make money” and that “not all cultures are equally valid” when deciding who should be allowed to live in the UK.

Jenrick, 42, has also staked out a tough position on the issue, and resigned as immigration minister in Sunak’s government after saying that his controversial plan to deport migrants to Rwanda did not go far enough.

After last week’s Commonwealth summit, where member states called on the UK to open talks on financial reparations for slavery, he told the Daily Mail that the British Empire’s “achievements” should be celebrated.

The former corporate lawyer has called for a legally-binding cap on net migration and for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

On the economy, he is in favour of liberalising reforms similar to those undertaken by Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s. 

Jenrick, who has been an MP since 2014, is such a fan of the former prime minister that he gave his daughter the middle name “Thatcher”.

While lagging behind in the polls, he told the BBC that the contest was “close” given low turnout, a further indication of the apathy surrounding the party, which is set for at least five years out of power.

The pair are facing off after Tory MPs whittled down the original six candidates during a series of votes.

Former foreign minister James Cleverly, from the party’s more centist faction, had looked certain to make the last two, but was surprisingly eliminated in the final vote by lawmakers last month.