Kemi Badenoch, a UK-based Nigerian national, some days ago, assumed the new Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade.
She was given the position by United Kingdom’s new Prime Minister, Liz Truss.
Badenoch replaced Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the now Secretary of State for Transport.
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She also contested the Prime Minister position and came fourth in the race.
Facts About Kemi Badenoch
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She was born on 2 January 1980 in Wimbledon, London to Nigerian parents.
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Her father was a medical doctor and her mother is a professor of physiology.
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Her father, Femi, died in February 2022 and she took bereavement leave from her ministerial duties for a brief period.
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She spent parts of her childhood in Lagos and the United States where her mother lectured before returning to the United Kingdom at 16.
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When she returned to the United Kingdom, she lived with a friend of her mother’s owing to the deteriorating political and economic situation in Nigeria which had affected her family.
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She is married to Hamish Badenick and they have two daughters and a son.
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Badenoch studied Computer Systems at the University of Sussex, completing a Master of Engineering (MEng) degree in 2003.
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While working as a software engineer, she studied law part-time at Birkbeck, University of London, and completed a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) in 2009.
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She later pursued a career in banking, working for the Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Coutts.
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She joined the Conservative Party in 2005 at the age of 25.
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She is considered to be in the political right of the party.
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At the 2010 general election, she contested the Dulwich and West Norwood constituency against Labour’s Tessa Jowell and came third.
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She was later elected to the House of Commons three years later in the 2015 general election and subsequently resigned from her seat on the London Assembly.
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She voted for Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit withdrawal agreement in early 2015. In the indicative votes on 27 March she voted against a referendum on a withdrawal agreement and a customs union with the European Union. In October, she voted for Johnson’s withdrawal agreement.
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In the run-up to the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election, she was tipped as a possible contender just two years into her tenure in parliament. She instead supported Michael Gove in the December 2019 general election.
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After Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in July 2019, Badenoch was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families.
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In the February 2020 reshuffle, she was appointed Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Equalities.
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She was promoted to Minister of State for Equalities and appointed Minister of State for Local Government, Faith, and Communities in September 2021.
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As Minister of State for Equalities, Badenoch opposed plans by the Financial Conduct Authority to allow trans employees to self-identify in the workplace and opposes gender-neutral bathrooms in public buildings.
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A supporter of Brexit in the 2016 referendum, she was elected to the House of Commons in 2017.
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Although a British Citizen and born in the United Kingdom, she stated that she “was to all intents and purposes a first-generation immigrant” during her parliamentary maiden speech.
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In that maiden speech, she described the vote for Brexit as “the greatest ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom” and cited her personal heroes as the conservative politicians Winston Churchill, Airey Neave, and Margaret Thatcher.
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On 6 July 2022, Badenoch resigned from the government, citing Boris Johnson’s handling of the Chris Pincher scandal in a joint statement with fellow ministers Alex Burghart, Neil O’Brien, Lee Rowley, and Julia Lopez.
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Two days later, she launched a bid to succeed Johnson as Conservative party leader. She announced an article for Times in which she said she wanted “to tell the truth and advocated strong and limited government.” But she was eliminated from the contest in the fourth round of voting.
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Badenoch describes herself as a cultural Christian and notes that her maternal grandfather was a Methodist minister in Nigeria.
