Kemi Badenoch

Kemi Badenoch became Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition in November 2024, after the party's catastrophic defeat at the July 2024 general election. She is MP for North West Essex, having represented Saffron Walden from 2017 to 2024. Before politics she worked at Goldman Sachs and Coutts, and held ministerial briefs under Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak including Equalities Minister and Secretary of State for Business and Trade. Her political positioning is defined by free-market economics, scepticism of equality and diversity orthodoxy, and a deliberate contrast with what she characterises as Labour's statism.

On 13 May 2026, Badenoch delivered the official Opposition response to the King's Speech, describing Starmer's programme as exhausted and deploying the line that Starmer "sent for Gordon Brown" to signal a government that had run out of ideas . The King's Speech reply was her most prominent parliamentary moment since the 2024 election defeat.

On 7 July 2026, Badenoch dismissed Nigel Farage's stated resignation from Clacton as a 'fake by-election' and declined to field a Conservative candidate against him, but said the party would contest a genuine second Clacton by-election should the ongoing parliamentary standards inquiry into a gift Farage received from donor Christopher Harborne find a breach and trigger a recall petition.