Kemi Badenoch

Leader of the Conservative Party

Becoming an MP in 2017 after a career in finance and consultancy, Kemi Badenoch has enjoyed a staggering rise to prominence. Last year, she defeated Robert Jenrick in a leadership election for the Conservative Party, assuming the Leader of the Opposition role. Politically, she takes a small-government stance, advocating against multiculturalism and ‘wokeness’.

Why did we invite her on?

In last July’s election, Labour enjoyed a landslide victory. A nation sick of Tory corruption and impotence ran into the arms of its rival; under the circumstances (the preceding 14 years), even typically right-wong voters could be sympathetic. But the country’s collective sigh was soon punctured - little more than six months later, Keir Starmer’s approval ratings have plummeted. A divided, demoralised country has become impossible to please, but scandal after scandal has eroded the public’s trust in their government.

The UK isn’t unhappy, and anyone who offers a positive vision is sure to succeed. Can Kemi be that promise? We wanted to find out.

What did we talk about?

”I got into politics because I hated identity politics, and I could see the state was building a hierarchy of groups. I wanted to fix that.”

Britain is broken, and Kemi is visibly passionate about reversing its fortunes. It’s not just identity politics rotting out our future: the demoralisation of young people, our self-loathing epidemic, and our obsession with declinism have each played a role in muddying the country’s view of its own future. Things need to change; as Kemi says, “we’ve got to get our mojo back.”

But how can Britain trust the Conservatives to fix it? After all, they enjoyed 14 years in power, and the problems they promised to fix only worsened. Would the public not be fools to give them another chance so quickly? Konstantin raises this challenge to Kemi.

”Our party made a lot of mistakes, but we’re under new leadership now. [The whole time], I was fighting all those things people hated … I can see what went wrong and why.”

And what’s that?