Kemi Badenoch Biography
Kemi Badenoch Biography : Olukemi “Kemi” Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch (née Adegoke; born 2 January 1980) is a British politician who became the Leader of the Opposition and head of the Conservative Party in November 2024, making history as the first black individual to hold these positions. She previously served in the Cabinet under Prime Ministers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak between 2022 and 2024. Since 2017, Kemi Badenoch has represented North West Essex, formerly known as Saffron Walden, as a Member of Parliament (MP).
Kemi Badenoch Early Life and Education
Kemi Badenoch, born Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke, arrived on 2 January 1980 in Wimbledon, London. Her mother traveled from Nigeria to give birth at St Teresa’s private hospital, just before the British Nationality Act 1981 ended automatic birthright citizenship for those born in the UK. Shortly after her birth, the family returned to Nigeria. Kemi Badenoch is one of three children of Yoruba Nigerian parents.
Kemi Badenoch Career
Early Career
Kemi Badenoch started her career in the IT sector, working as a software engineer at Logica (now CGI Group) from 2003 to 2006. During this time, she pursued a part-time law degree at Birkbeck, University of London, earning her LLB in 2009. She later worked as a systems analyst at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group before moving into consultancy and financial services. From 2006 to 2013, she served as an associate director at the private bank Coutts, later taking on the role of digital director at The Spectator from 2015 to 2016.
Political Career
Kemi Badenoch joined the Conservative Party in 2005 at the age of 25. In the 2010 general election, she ran for the Dulwich and West Norwood seat, finishing third behind Labour’s Tessa Jowell and the Liberal Democrat candidate Jonathan Mitchell.
London Assembly
In the 2012 London Assembly election, Kemi Badenoch was fifth on the Conservatives’ London-wide list, but only three seats were secured, leaving her unelected. In 2015, following Victoria Borwick’s election to Parliament, Badenoch assumed a seat in the Assembly as other higher-placed candidates were also elected as MPs. She retained her Assembly seat in the 2016 election but left in 2017, succeeded by Susan Hall.
Kemi Badenoch supported Brexit during the 2016 EU referendum. In 2018, she revealed that a decade earlier, she had pranked Harriet Harman, then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, by hacking her website. Though Harman accepted her apology, the incident was reported to Action Fraud, the UK’s cybercrime authority.
Kemi Badenoch Personal Life
Kemi Badenoch is married to Hamish Badenoch, who works at Deutsche Bank and served as a Conservative councillor for Merton Borough Council from 2014 to 2018. He also ran as the Conservative candidate for Foyle in Northern Ireland during the 2015 general election. The couple has three children: two daughters and a son.
Kemi Badenoch has been actively involved in community roles, serving on the board of Charlton Triangle Homes housing association until 2016 and as a school governor at St Thomas the Apostle College in Southwark and Jubilee Primary School.
She identifies as an agnostic with cultural Christian values and highlights that her maternal grandfather was a Methodist minister in Nigeria. Her father passed away in February 2022, prompting her to take a brief bereavement leave from her ministerial responsibilities.