Kemi Badenoch’s time has come

The Tories are about to choose a leader once more, and this time cannot allow themselves any self-indulgence. In 2022, they sidelined Kemi Badenoch – far and away the most popular candidate with the party-membership – in favour of a choice between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. Tory MPs resembled a football manager ‘fielding the reserves’. The resulting electoral meltdown this summer seemed inevitable.

Much has been made of Badenoch’s rather inspiring backstory: the birth in Wimbledon to middle-class parents (father a GP, mother a university professor), the childhood under a grim left-wing dictatorship in Nigeria, and her teenage move to the UK with £100 in her pocket. She is a feelgood politician, one far more likely to point out the virtues of Britain than to give us a tale full of grievance, woe or imperial injustice.

‘I came to this country aged 16 and now I am standing for Prime Minister,’ she