After the election defeat, the British Conservative Party elected Kemi Badenoch as its new leader.

Britain’s Conservative Party on Saturday elected Kemi Badenoch as its new leader as it tries to recover from a crushing election defeat after 14 years in power.

The first black woman to lead a major British political party, Badenoch defeated rival lawmaker Robert Jenrick of the centre-right Conservatives in a vote of about 100,000 members.

In online and postal voting by party members, he received 53,806 votes, while Jenrick received 41,388 votes.

Badenoch replaces former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who in July led the Conservatives to their worst election result since 1832. The Conservatives lost more than 200 seats, reducing their total to 121.

The new leader has the challenging task of attempting to restore the party’s reputation after years of division, scandals and economic turmoil, criticizing Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s policies on issues such as the economy and immigration, and returning the Conservatives to power in the next elections. To be brought back in, scheduled for 2029.

“The task before us is difficult but simple,” Badenoch said in his victory speech to a room packed with Conservative MPs, staffers and journalists in London. He said the party’s job was to hold the Labor government to account and to make promises and plans for the government.

Addressing the party’s electoral defeat, he said, “We have to be honest – honest about the fact that we made mistakes, honest about the fact that we allowed standards to fall.”

“It’s time to speak the truth, defend our principles, plan our future, reset our politics and our thinking, and give our party and our country the fresh start they deserve,” Badenoch said.

A business secretary in Sunak’s government, Badenoch was born in London to Nigerian parents and spent most of her childhood in the West African country.

The 44-year-old former software engineer describes herself as a disruptor, advocating a free market economy and low taxation and promising to “reconfigure, reset and reprogram” the British state.

A critic of multiculturalism and a self-proclaimed enemy of social awakening, Badenoch has criticized gender-neutral bathrooms and government plans to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions. During the leadership campaign, she received criticism for saying that “not all cultures are equally valid” and for suggesting that maternity pay was excessive.

Tim Bell, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said that the Conservative Party was likely to “lean to the right in terms of its economic and social policies” under Badenoch.

He predicted that Badenoch would pursue “what you might call a strategy of boats, boilers and bathrooms…”, focusing heavily on the trans issue, the immigration issue and climate change skepticism.

Although the Conservative Party is not representative of the entire country – its 132,000 members are mostly older, affluent white men – its senior ranks have become quite diverse.

Badenoch is the fourth female leader of the Tories, after Margaret Thatcher and Liz Truss, both of whom became prime ministers. After Sunak, she is the second Conservative leader from a non-white background and the first Conservative leader of African descent. In contrast, the centre-left Labor Party has been led exclusively by white men.

In a leadership contest that lasted more than three months, Conservative MPs narrowed the two finalists down to six candidates in a series of votes before introducing them to the party’s broader membership.

Both finalists came from the right of the party and argued they could win back voters from Reform UK, the far-right, anti-immigrant party led by populist politician Nigel Farage that has eroded Conservative support.

But the party also lost many voters to the Labor Party and the centrist Liberal Democrats, and some conservatives fear that a move to the right will alienate the party from public opinion.

Starmer’s government has had a difficult first few months in office due to negative headlines, fiscal pessimism and falling approval ratings.

But Bell said history shows the odds are against Badenoch bringing the Conservatives back to power in 2029.

“When a party loses heavily, it is quite unusual for someone to take control and succeed in leading it to an electoral victory,” he said. “Yet Keir Starmer did exactly the same thing after 2019. So records are bound to be broken.”

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