Kemi Badenoch MP, leader of the opposition
About this episode
Kemi Badenoch discusses her journey from Nigeria to becoming the Leader of the Opposition in the UK.
Kemi Badenoch is the Conservative MP for North West Essex and the Leader of the Opposition. Since winning her seat in 2017, she has held cabinet positions as Minister of State for Equalities under Boris Johnson and Secretary of State for International Trade under Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. She became leader of the Conservative Party in 2024 after Rishi Sunak’s resignation and is the first black person to lead a political party in Britain. Her Nigerian parents came to Britain for medical treatment and Kemi was born in a private hospital in Wimbledon in January 1980. Her parents returned with their newborn daughter, and she was brought up in Nigeria in an affluent suburb of Lagos. After a series of military coups and economic downturns, her family, along with many other middle-class families in Nigeria saw their wealth decline and Kemi was sent to London to study for her A levels. Instead of following her parents into medicine, she chose to pursue Computer Systems Engineering and went to Sussex University. A well-paid career in IT followed and she joined the Conservative Party aged twenty-five where she also met her husband, Hamish. Her first attempt at becoming an MP was in 2010…
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