Six contestants, including Nigerian-born British member of Parliament, Kemi Badenoch have exceeded the threshold of votes from 30 Conservative Party lawmakers each to proceed to the next round, as the race for the party’s leadership and UK prime minister progressed on Wednesday.
Badenoch scored 40 votes in the first round to place fourth behind the leading contender, former chancellor of exchequer Rishi Sunak who polled 88 votes; Junior Trade Secretary Penny Mordaunt scored 67 votes to place second and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss with 50 votes came third.
Also through to the next round are former British military officer who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat, and Attorney General Suella Braverman. Both mustered 37 and 32 votes respectively.
Two contestants, current Chancellor of Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi and former health and foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt got knocked out of the race, having fallen below the 30 votes threshold with their 25 and 18 scores respectively.
The six first-round winners will face successive voting rounds among colleagues in the parliament from Thursday until two are left in the race.
The Conservative Party members will vote to decide the winner on September 5.
The race to occupy Number 10 Downing Street opened following the resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson as the party’s leader last Thursday.
Although Johnson will quit office, the country will not head to the polls until 2024. The Conservative Party that won the last parliamentary election will produce the new prime minister.
Forty-two-year-old Kemi Badenoch, member of parliament for Saffron Walden announced her bid for the British top job in an article published by the Times of London newspaper, expressing the wish to run a “strong but limited government focused on the essentials.”
The former equalities minister also promised to run on a “smart and nimble centre-right vision.”
“Badenoch was born in 1980 in Wimbledon, London, to Femi and Feyi Adegoke. Her father was a medical doctor and her mother is a professor of physiology. Badenoch’s childhood included time living in the United States (where her mother lectured) and Lagos, Nigeria.
She holds British citizenship owing to her birth in the United Kingdom. She returned to the UK at the age of 16.
Badenoch holds a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Sussex. She worked as a software engineer at Logica and went on to work at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group as a systems analyst before working as an associate director at Coutts and later as a director at The Spectator magazine.
She was elected for Saffron Walden at the 2017 general election. After Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in July 2019, Badenoch was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families. In the February 2020 reshuffle, she was appointed Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Equalities. In September 2021, she was promoted to Minister of State for Equalities and appointed Minister of State for Local Government, Faith, and Communities.
