Never afraid to ruffle feathers, Kemi Badenoch’s willingness to say what others may consider unspeakable has made her the darling of the conservative base.

Her outspoken views on issues ranging from gender identity to institutional racism have enthused her supporters on the right while in equal measure outraged critics on the left.

During a turbulent ministerial career, Ms Badenoch clashed with civil servants over her insistence that public buildings had separate toilets for men and women and was accused of bullying her own officials .

Considered the scourge of the “woke”, her direct and direct style offers in the eyes of some Conservatives the best antidote to the appeal of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.

Others, however, fear that his confrontational approach – it is often said that it could start a fight in an empty room – risks generating unnecessary controversies that distract from the imperative to regain lost political ground.

Just at the party’s recent annual conference in Birmingham, she had to clarify off-the-cuff comments suggesting she thought maternity pay was too high and that “bad” civil servants should be in jail.

For her part, Ms Badenoch denied deliberately seeking confrontation or engaging in so-called “culture wars”.

Likewise, she never backed down from criticism.

When Doctor Who actor David Tennant told an LGBT+ awards ceremony that he would like to wake up to a world where she “no longer exists” and that he wishes she “would Shut up,” Mrs Badenoch replied, swearing she would. not to be silenced by a “white, rich, left-wing male celebrity” who attacks “the only black woman in government.”

This row reflects her sometimes difficult relationship with elements of the LGBT+ community: she was called to resign as Equalities Minister when three government advisers on the issue resigned due to the government’s failure to ban the gay conversion therapy.

Some were surprised to hear such decidedly conservative views from a black woman – when she arrived at Westminster she was sometimes mistaken for a Labor MP.

Badenoch, however, has made it clear that her political vision is firmly rooted in her Nigerian heritage.

His path to leadership of the Conservative Party has been anything but conventional.

Born in a private Catholic maternity hospital in Wimbledon, she grew up in Nigeria where her father was a general practitioner and her mother a lecturer in physiology.

When the country’s economy collapsed in the 1990s, her parents took advantage of her British passport to get her out, sending her at the age of 16 to live with a family friend in Morden, south from London, to continue his studies.

Ms Badenoch – who spoke Yoruba before she spoke English – later said she was “to all intents and purposes a first generation immigrant”.

Enrolled at a local college to study for a bachelor’s degree, she also worked part-time at McDonald’s to support herself.

Coming from a solidly middle-class background and hoping to become a doctor, it was a shock to find herself among young working-class people from whom little was expected.

While her tutors sought to dissuade her from applying for “things I wouldn’t get into”, she decided to study computer engineering at the University of Sussex.

The attitudes she encountered among left-wing students – “snotty, middle-class people from north London who couldn’t get into Oxbridge” – helped launch her into Conservative politics.

In particular, she was furious at the “high-minded” way they talked about Africa, while understanding little about the realities of life on the continent.

“Those stupid left-wing white kids didn’t know what they were talking about,” she told the Times. “And that instinctively made me think, ‘those aren’t my people’.”

After leaving university, she initially worked as a software engineer before moving into banking as an associate director at Coutts and then digital director at The Spectator magazine.

In 2005, at the age of 25, she joined the Conservative Party, citing Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and (perhaps more surprisingly) Airey Neave – assassinated by the INLA in 1979 – among her political heroes.

She stood unsuccessfully in the Labor constituency of Dulwich and West Norwood in the 2005 general election, but won election to Westminster in the safe Conservative seat of Saffron Walden in 2017.

A staunch supporter of Brexit, she made an immediate impression, describing the vote to leave the EU as “the greatest vote of confidence in the UK project ever” in her inaugural speech and securing a place at the in the executive of the Conservative backbench committee of 1922. .

When Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019, he gave Ms Badenoch her first government role as junior minister for children and families.

Promoted to Equalities Minister, she made headlines by openly defending the controversial Sewell Report, commissioned in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, which concluded that the UK was not institutionally racist.

Her comments reflect a long-standing distrust of identity politics – she complains about how her three mixed-race children with her banker husband, Hamish Badenoch, are seen only as black.

Her ministerial rise under Mr Johnson did not prevent her from joining the tidal wave of resignations, precipitated by the Chris Pincher scandal, which ultimately forced her out of 10th place in 2022.

Despite her relative inexperience, Ms Badenoch entered the race to succeed him as Conservative leader, finishing honorably fourth of the eight candidates to appear on the ballot, significantly raising her profile.

She was rewarded with a promotion to Cabinet by the winner, Liz Truss, who made her international trade secretary – a position she retained under Rishi Sunak, who also put her in charge of women and equality.

Despite being publicly loyal during his time as prime minister, Ms Badenoch reportedly attacked him after the Conservatives’ defeat in the general election, calling his decision to call an early poll without consulting Cabinet unconstitutional.

Launching her second leadership campaign in two years, she argued they had “talked to the right but governed to the left” as she argued for a smaller state, with a government doing “fewer things » but doing them with “brilliance”.

Ms Badenoch sparked further controversy with a newspaper article in which she said “not all cultures are equally valid” as immigrants to the UK should “share our values ​​and contribute to our society”.

It will now be up to the party members who have adored her for so long to decide whether she can now be the leader to put them on the path back to power.