Olukemi Olufunto "Kemi" Badenoch is a British politician serving as Secretary of State for Business and Trade since 2023 and President of the Board of Trade and Minister for Women and Equalities since 2022.
49 Facts About Kemi Badenoch
2.
Kemi Badenoch previously held a series of junior ministerial positions under Boris Johnson from 2019 to 2022.
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In 2012, Badenoch unsuccessfully contested a seat on the London Assembly, but was appointed to the body after Victoria Borwick resigned in 2015.
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Kemi Badenoch is one of three children born to middle class Yoruba parents.
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Kemi Badenoch's father, Femi Adegoke, is a GP and her mother, Feyi Adegoke, is a professor of physiology.
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Kemi Badenoch spent parts of her childhood living in Lagos, Nigeria and in the United States, where her mother lectured.
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Kemi Badenoch has a brother named Fola and a sister called Lola.
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Kemi Badenoch returned to the UK at the age of 16 to live with a friend of her mother's owing to the deteriorating political and economic situation in Nigeria which had affected her family.
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Kemi Badenoch obtained A Levels from Phoenix College, a former further education college in Morden, whilst working at a branch of McDonald's among other jobs.
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Kemi Badenoch studied Computer Systems Engineering at the University of Sussex, completing a Master of Engineering degree in 2003.
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Kemi Badenoch initially worked within the IT sector, first as a software engineer at Logica from 2003 to 2006.
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Kemi Badenoch then worked as a systems analyst at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, before pursuing a career in consultancy and financial services, working as an associate director of private bank and wealth manager Coutts from 2006 to 2013 and later a digital director at The Spectator from 2015 to 2016.
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Kemi Badenoch joined the Conservative Party in 2005 at the age of 25.
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In 2012, Kemi Badenoch stood for the Conservatives in the London Assembly election, where she was placed fifth on the London-wide list.
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The election saw the Conservatives win only three seats from the London-wide list, so Kemi Badenoch was not elected.
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Kemi Badenoch was therefore declared to be the new Assembly Member.
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Kemi Badenoch went on to retain her seat in the Assembly in the 2016 election.
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Kemi Badenoch supported Brexit in the 2016 UK EU membership referendum.
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Kemi Badenoch was shortlisted to be the Conservative Party candidate for the marginal Hampstead and Kilburn constituency at the 2017 general election, but was unsuccessful.
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Kemi Badenoch was ultimately selected as the Conservative candidate for Saffron Walden, a safe seat for her party, which she held with 37,629 votes and a majority of 24,966.
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Kemi Badenoch was appointed as the Conservative Party's Vice Chair for Candidates in January 2018.
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Kemi Badenoch voted for Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement in early 2019.
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In July 2019, Kemi Badenoch was appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families by the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.
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In February 2020, Kemi Badenoch was appointed Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Department for International Trade.
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Kemi Badenoch has been a member of the Public Accounts Committee since March 2020.
26.
On 6 July 2022, Kemi Badenoch resigned from government, citing Johnson's handling of the Chris Pincher scandal, in a joint statement with fellow Ministers Alex Burghart, Neil O'Brien, Lee Rowley and Julia Lopez.
27.
Kemi Badenoch was eliminated in the fourth round of voting, as she received the fewest votes of the remaining candidates.
28.
On 25 October 2022, Kemi Badenoch was retained as International Trade Secretary by Rishi Sunak upon his ascension to the Prime Ministership.
29.
Kemi Badenoch said that Cash had "a track record of promoting women's rights and freedom of expression".
30.
The Guardian said that Kemi Badenoch had not broken any rules by making the appointment.
31.
In late April 2023, Kemi Badenoch announced that the government was planning to reduce the number of laws to be repealed to around 800, as opposed to the government's original target of around 4,000 laws.
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Many regard Kemi Badenoch as being on the right wing of the Conservative Party.
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Kemi Badenoch has personally described herself as being on the "liberal wing" of the Conservative Party who is "not really left-leaning on anything".
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Kemi Badenoch has identified philosopher Roger Scruton and economist Thomas Sowell as her influences, citing Sowell's Basic Economics as an influence.
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Kemi Badenoch has been characterized as a social conservative and 'anti-woke' politician.
36.
In leaked WhatsApp messages, Kemi Badenoch said "I don't care about colonialism because [I] know what we were doing before colonialism got there" and argued that Europeans "came in and just made a different bunch of winners and losers" on the African continent.
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Kemi Badenoch stated that prior to colonisation, "There was never any concept of 'rights,' so [the] people who lost out were old elites not everyday people".
38.
In 2019, Kemi Badenoch abstained on a vote to extend same-sex marriage rights to Northern Ireland.
39.
In 2021, Vice News said they had received leaked audio from 2018 in which Kemi Badenoch mocked gay marriage, referred to trans women as "men" and used the term transsexual which is considered offensive by some trans people.
40.
In 2018, Kemi Badenoch admitted that, a decade earlier, she had hacked into the website of Harriet Harman, who was then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party; Harman accepted Kemi Badenoch's apology, but the matter was reported to Action Fraud, the UK's cyber crime reporting centre.
41.
In 2019, Kemi Badenoch was criticised by a number of Labour MPs for suggesting that Tulip Siddiq was "making a point" by delaying her scheduled Caesarean section in order to attend a House of Commons vote on Brexit.
42.
Kemi Badenoch published a series of tweets in January 2021 in which she included screenshots of questions sent to her office by HuffPost journalist Nadine White whom she, as a result, accused of "creepy and bizarre behaviour".
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Kemi Badenoch's actions were criticised by both the National Union of Journalists and the Council of Europe's Safety of Journalists Platform.
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Kemi Badenoch was defended by the prime minister's press secretary who commented that it was all a "misunderstanding".
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Kemi Badenoch is married to Hamish Badenoch; they have two daughters and a son.
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Kemi Badenoch unsuccessfully contested Foyle for the Northern Ireland Conservatives at the 2015 general election.
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Kemi Badenoch was a board member of the Charlton Triangle Homes housing association until 2016, and was a school governor at St Thomas the Apostle College in Southwark, and the Jubilee Primary School.
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Kemi Badenoch describes herself as a cultural Christian and notes that her maternal grandfather was a Methodist minister in Nigeria.
49.
Kemi Badenoch was sworn in as a member of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council on 13 September 2022 at Buckingham Palace.