LONDON –

Britain’s Conservative Party elected Kemi Badenoch as its leader on Saturday as it attempts to recover from a crushing election defeat that ended 14 years in power.

The first black woman to lead a major British political party, Badenoch beat rival lawmaker Robert Jenrick in a vote of nearly 100,000 members of the center-right Conservative Party.

She received 53,806 votes in online and postal voting by party members, compared to Jenrick’s 41,388.

Badenoch replaces former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who in July led the Conservatives to their worst election result since 1832. The Conservatives lost more than 200 seats, bringing their total to 121.

The new leader’s daunting task is to try to restore the party’s reputation after years of divisions, scandals and economic turmoil, hammering Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s policies on key issues including the economy and immigration, and to bring the Conservatives back to power in the next election. expected by 2029.

“The task before us is difficult but simple,” Badenoch said in his victory speech to a room full of conservative lawmakers, staffers and journalists in London. She said the party’s task was to hold the Labor government to account and develop commitments and a plan for government.

Addressing the party’s electoral defeat, she said “we have to be honest – honest that we made mistakes, honest that we let standards slip”.

“The time has come to tell the truth, to stand up for our principles, to plan our future, to rethink our politics and our thinking, and to give our party and our country the fresh start they deserve,” Badenoch said . said.

Sunak’s government business secretary, Badenoch was born in London to Nigerian parents and spent much of her childhood in the West African country.

The 44-year-old former software engineer presents herself as a disruptor, advocating for a low-tax market economy and pledging to “rewire, reboot and reprogram” the British state.

A critic of multiculturalism and self-proclaimed enemy of wokeness, Badenoch has criticized gender-neutral bathrooms and the British government’s plans to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions. During the leadership campaign, she was criticized for saying that “not all cultures are created equal” and for suggesting that maternity benefits were excessive.

Tim Bale, professor of political science at Queen Mary University of London, said the Conservative Party was likely to “shift to the right both in terms of economic policy and social policy” under Badenoch.

He predicted Badenoch would pursue “what might be called the boats, boilers and toilets strategy… focusing a lot on the trans issue, the immigration issue and skepticism about progress towards net zero “.

Although the Conservative Party is not representative of the country as a whole – its 132,000 members are mostly older, affluent white men – its upper echelons have become significantly more diverse.

Badenoch is the third woman to lead the Conservatives, after Margaret Thatcher and Liz Truss, both of whom became Prime Minister. She is the second Conservative leader of non-white origin, after Sunak, and the first to have African roots. In contrast, the center-left Labor Party has only ever been led by white men.

In a leadership race that lasted more than three months, Conservative lawmakers narrowed the field to six candidates in a series of votes before handing the final two to the entire party membership.

Both finalists came from the right of the party and said they could win back voters from Reform UK, the far-right, anti-immigration party led by populist politician Nigel Farage and which has eaten into Conservative support.

But the party has also lost many voters to the winning Labor Party and the centrist Liberal Democrats, and some conservatives fear a shift to the right will alienate the party from public opinion.

Starmer’s government has endured a difficult first few months in office, plagued by negative headlines, fiscal gloom and plummeting popularity ratings.

But Bale said historical facts suggest Badenoch has little chance of returning the Conservatives to power in 2029.

“It’s quite unusual for someone to take power when a party is very badly beaten and manage to lead them to electoral victory,” he said. “However, that’s exactly what Keir Starmer did after 2019. So the records are there to be broken.”