Kemi Badenoch, the first black woman to lead the UK’s Conservative Party, has spoken candidly about the hostility she has faced since taking up the role, admitting she has been surprised by the scale of the abuse.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Badenoch said: “There’s a certain cadre of people who clearly can’t cope with the fact that I won this and I’m doing it. The level of personal attacks from anonymous people, it’s hysterical. Not even just from MPs. I actually don’t think it’s that many MPs. I think it’s two to three people out of 120. That’s nothing. But online as well. People used to talk about Trump derangement syndrome. I think there’s a Kemi derangement syndrome: ‘How could she possibly have done this?’.”
She added that some of the criticism has taken on a racial tone: “There’s a lot of ethno-nationalism creeping up, lots of stuff about my race and my ethnicity and the tropes around, ‘well, she couldn’t possibly have done this all by herself’.”
Badenoch, who was born in Wimbledon and raised partly in Nigeria, rarely speaks about her race but said she always considers other factors before attributing anything to racism.
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“I always try to think of every possible explanation before I go to race and racism. I think that is a healthy way to run a society. I remember when I stood up a few years ago and said Britain is not a racist country – ethnic minorities do very well here, it is white working-class boys who are actually struggling on a lot of metrics, and I got pilloried for that.”
The Conservative leader, currently preparing for her first party conference, also dismissed reports that shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick might replace her, saying: “I think it’s wishful thinking. There will always be people who are sore losers, our candidate didn’t win, and so on, and sour grapes … When I hear those things, I can tell those people are not focused on the country at all. Many of those people having those conversations think this is a game. But the lives of people in this country aren’t a game.”
