Rod Liddle: UK correspondent on Kemi Badenoch elected as UK Conservatives new leader

Kemi Badenoch has been elected as the UK Conservatives new leader. 

The 44-year-old is vowing to turn the Tory’s around. 

Badenoch’s election marks the first time a woman of colour has led a major political party in the UK. 

UK correspondent Rod Liddle tells Mike Hosking there is a suspicion that the public will like Badenoch, bucking the trend of a big party cycling through several leaders before the next election. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Big Geking and Britain for the Tories as the party
members after a three month process involving the party in Pays,
decided who's going to lead them. Kimy bed Knocks taking
them to the Promised Land. Allegedly she's the sixth leader
of nine years. Rod Little's with us, Rod, very good
morning to you. Kimmy Bedknock, as we discussed last Thursday,
wasn't necessarily a surprise. Is she a placeholder or potentially
one of the greats?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
That's the interesting question and well done, well done. What
the people who supported her are tried to say is
that she will buck history by being the real one
who will take the Conservatives to the next extra and
win it. Of course history is against her. What tends
to happen when a big party is picked out of

(00:42):
powers that they go through two or three leaders before
they can agree upon one who the public likes. But
there is the suspicion with Kenny Badenoch that the public
will like her. She is fourth right, perhaps two fourth rights. Sometimes.
The most the guard you get on her to do

(01:02):
her down today was to say she doesn't say thank
you very often, and there is a question about her humility.
And her abrasiveness. But those were all things which, as
the tours will tell you, were leveled at Margaret Thatcher
when she exceeded to power in the mid to late
nineteen seventies and went on to win a landslide election.

(01:26):
I think she is a very very good choice, and
I think she's been I've been a kind of leader
in waiting for a couple of years now. Already the
Labor Party has got itself in trouble with Dawn Butler,
one Labor MPs saying that she is a blackface white supremacist.

(01:47):
This is from a party which has never had a
black leader, never had a female leader, you know. And
this all does play a little bit with the public.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
How much of her success depends on her driving her
party more or to the right or the conservative end
of the spectrum, versus Labor being in it.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
An awful lot about winning the next selection depends upon
Labor being inept, and she will have to hope that
Labor continue being in apt blduce. They've certainly been that
for the first three or four months of the of
their reign. She will hope that they will continue to
do that. I'm not sure it's dragging the party to
the right terribly much. In some ways, she's quite a

(02:32):
pro leveling up politician. She does appeal to the red
wall there are on the on the social issues, on
the conservative kind of social issues of transgenderism, race and
all that stuff. She is very very firmly on the right,
but then so is the large majority of the British public,

(02:55):
so I don't think that's a huge problem for her.
What will be a problem is sniping amongst the conservative
MPs who are in there, especially the left wing MPs
such as people like Christopher Chope, who, shortly before she
won her contest against Robert Jenrick, said that she would

(03:15):
spend too much time with her children rather than leading
the party. That's the level of opposition she's facing at
the moment, and I don't think she will give it
much mind.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Grad So I catch up with you tomorrow. IROD appreciate
it very much. Rod little out of the UK for
us this morning. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,
listen live to news Talks it'd be from six am weekdays,
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