Saffron Walden MP Kemi Badenoch is top choice for next Conservative Party leader
Saffron Walden’s MP Kemi Badenoch has topped a survey of Tory grassroots supporters as their choice to be the next Tory Party leader.
The Secretary of State for Business and Trade, who will be 44 tomorrow (Tuesday, January 2), is a favourite with Conservative Home.
She also topped the right-wing news and analysis site’s Cabinet League Table and was its voting panel’s Minister of the Year.
Conservative Home observed that the Conservatives were currently trailing Labour by 18 points in Politico’s Poll of Polls and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has signalled a General Election will take place this year, before the January 2025 deadline.
The survey of 647 panellists to name his likely successor gave Mrs Badenoch, who is also President of the Board of Trade and Minister for Women and Equalities, 38% of the vote.
Penny Mordaunt, the Leader of the House of Commons, Lord President of the Council and MP for Portsmouth North, was second with 23%. In third place, completing an all-female top trio was former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the MP for Fareham.
Mrs Badenoch’s Essex constituency neighbour, Home Secretary and Braintree MP James Cleverly, came fourth.
Apart from the three women, no other politicians - including ineligible candidate Nigel Farage, former leader of the UK Independence Party and the Brexit Party - mustered support in double digits.
Conservative Home concluded: ”Ours is as likely a list as any in the event of both a Conservative General Election loss and then a leadership poll, assuming that all named stand and hold their seats.
“Badenoch topped both our and YouGov’s polls (eventually) during the last leadership election but one, so taken together with her recent returns in our surveys this finding is no surprise.”
In Conservative Home’s last such survey two years ago, Mrs Badenoch ranked 11th.
MP for South West Norfolk Liz Truss, who went on to become the country’s shortest-serving Prime Minister with just 49 full days in office, was first and her unopposed successor, Mr Sunak was second. Ms Mordaunt was third.
The poll mirrored the result when all three ran to succeed disgraced Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was forced to resign in 2022 after a raft of ministers, including Mrs Badenoch, resigned.
She also joined the leadership contest but was eliminated in the fourth round of voting. the Saffron Walden constituency has been renamed as North West Essex for the next General Election.
The married mother-of-three was a member of the London Assembly before succeeding Sir Alan Haselhurst, now life peer Baron Haselhurst of Saffron Walden, as Uttlesford's MP in 2017.
Before entering politics, the computer systems engineering graduate from Wimbledon, south-west London, worked as a software engineer and systems analyst before becoming an associate director at Coutts and director of The Spectator magazine.
She spent part of her childhood in the USA and in Lagos, Nigeria.
