England s New Conservative Superstar – by Zoe Strimpel
Pundits have described Badenoch as a Tory Barack Obama, with headlines boosting her as Labour s worst nightmare and the antiwoke crusader Britain needs. She comfortably deploys the kind of bold and direct speech about complicated ideas that seem impossible for other politicians. In other words, she speaks like a normal person. And like Obama, Badenoch is an outsider: born to Nigerian parents, raised in Lagos, she worked at McDonalds when she arrived as a teenager in the U.K.
Badenoch has garnered a fierce and widespread following, feted, in one prominent commentator s words, with having saved the Tories. Last week, she beat the popular former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, 56 to 34 in a Yougov poll of Tory Party members.
She s now out of the race for prime minister; the choice is now between Sunak and Liz Truss. But that almost seems secondary to what Kemi Badenoch has accomplished: A woman who doesn t even hold a cabinet position has become the unequivocal star of the Tory Party.
How this happened began with what else? the culture war.