London Assembly

In 2012, Badenoch stood for the Conservatives in the London Assembly election, where she was placed fifth on the London-wide list.^[21] The election saw the Conservatives win three seats from the London-wide list, meaning she was not elected.^[22]

Three years later, in the 2015 general election, Victoria Borwick was elected to the House of Commons^[23] and thus resigned her seat on the London Assembly. The fourth-placed candidate on the list, Suella Fernandes (Braverman), was also elected to the House of Commons,^[24] so declined the vacancy. Badenoch was therefore declared to be the new Assembly Member.^[25] She went on to retain her seat in the Assembly at the 2016 election, being succeeded in 2017 by fellow Conservative Susan Hall.^[26] Badenoch supported Brexit in the 2016 UK EU membership referendum.^[9]

Early tenure

In her maiden speech as an MP on 19 July 2017, she described the vote for Brexit as "the greatest ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom" and cited her personal heroes as the Conservative politicians Winston Churchill, Airey Neave and Margaret Thatcher.^[30]

In the same month, Badenoch was selected to join the 1922 Executive Committee.^[31] In September, she was appointed to the parliamentary Justice Select Committee.^[32] She was appointed as the Conservative Party's Vice Chair for Candidates in January 2018.^[33]

She voted for Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement in early 2019. In the indicative votes on 27 March, she voted against a referendum on a withdrawal agreement and against a customs union with the EU.^[34] In October, Badenoch voted for Johnson's withdrawal agreement.^[35]

In the run-up to the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election, Badenoch was tipped as a possible contender just two years into her tenure in parliament.^[36] Badenoch instead supported the campaign of Michael Gove. In the December 2019 general election, she was re-elected with an increased majority of 27,594 (43.7%) votes.^[37][38]

Johnson government

In July 2019, Badenoch was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.^[39][40] In February 2020, Badenoch was appointed Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Minister for Equalities) in the Department for International Trade.^[41]

In a Cabinet reshuffle in September 2021, Badenoch was promoted to Minister of State for Equalities and appointed Minister of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.^[42] Within days of her appointments, the latter title was renamed "Minister of State for Levelling Up Communities".^[43][44][45] On 6 July 2022, 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.^[46]

Leadership candidacy

Following Johnson's resignation, Badenoch launched a bid to succeed him as Conservative Party leader,^[47] stating that she wanted to "tell the truth" and that she advocated "strong but limited government".^[48] As a candidate, she called the target of net zero carbon emissions "ill-thought through" and said that politicians had become "hooked on the idea of the state fixing the majority of problems".^[49] She launched her campaign at an event held on 12 July.^[50] At her launch, handwritten signs saying "Men" and "Ladies" were taped to the doors of gender-neutral toilets; however, Pink News and others understood that these signs appeared before Badenoch and her team arrived at the venue.^[51][52]

According to The Sunday Times, Badenoch entered the race as "a relatively unknown minister for local government" but "within a week emerged as the insurgent candidate to become Britain’s next prime minister".^[53] She was eliminated in the fourth round of voting, as she received the fewest votes of the remaining candidates.^[54]

Following her elimination from the leadership contest, Badenoch did not endorse another candidate.^[55]

Truss government

In September 2022, after Liz Truss became Prime Minister, she appointed Badenoch to her Cabinet as Secretary of State for International Trade.^[56][57] Following Truss' resignation the following month, Badenoch endorsed Rishi Sunak in the leadership election,^[58] stating that he was "the serious, honest leader we need".^[59]

Sunak government

On 25 October 2022, Badenoch was retained as Secretary of State for International Trade by Rishi Sunak upon him becoming Prime Minister. She was also granted the additional role of Minister for Women & Equalities.^[60]

In a February 2023 Cabinet reshuffle, Badenoch was appointed as the first Secretary of State at the newly-created Department for Business and Trade, with continued responsibility for equalities. The new role was effectively an expansion of her portfolio as International Trade Secretary to include the business and investment responsibilities of the now-defunct Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.^[4][61]

In January 2023, Badenoch, as Equalities Minister, appointed Joanne Cash as a Commissioner to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) board. Badenoch said that Cash had "a track record of promoting women's rights and freedom of expression". The Labour Party criticised the appointment as, after being approved for the appointment, Cash had donated money to Badenoch's campaign as a candidate for leadership of the Conservative Party in the summer of 2022 and Badenoch had not declared this. The Guardian said that Badenoch had not broken any rules by making the appointment. The EHRC said it has "robust procedures in place to manage conflicts of interest or perceived conflicts of interest, including requiring any board members to recuse themselves from discussion where there may be conflicts. These procedures will be applied in this case too". A government’s Equality Hub spokesperson said the appointment "was made following a full and open competition, which involved a public application process and interviews with an expert panel".^[62]

In late April 2023, 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.^[63][64] Such reversal was met with dismay by Brexit advocates, including the Bill's original architect Jacob Rees-Mogg.^[65] Despite this controversy, New Statesman named her as the seventh most powerful British right-wing figure in 2023, describing her as the "darling" of many party members in spite of "cooling enthusiasm".^[66]

Beliefs

Badenoch is seen by many as being on the right wing of the Conservative Party.^[67] She has personally described herself as being on the "liberal wing" of the Conservative Party,^[68] whilst being "not really left-leaning on anything".^[69] She has identified English philosopher Roger Scruton and American economist Thomas Sowell as her influences, citing Sowell's Basic Economics as an influence.^[70] She has also been characterized as a social conservative and 'anti-woke' politician.^[71][68]

Race relations

During a House of Commons debate in April 2021, Badenoch criticised the Labour Party's response to a report compiled by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities that had declared Britain was not institutionally racist. Labour had described the report as "cherry-picking of data", while the party's former frontbench MP Dawn Butler claimed the report was "gaslighting on a national scale", describing those who put it together as "racial gatekeepers".^[72] Badenoch accused Labour of "wilful misrepresentations" over the report and responded to Butler's comments by stating "It is wrong to accuse those who argue for a different approach as being racism deniers or race traitors. It's even more irresponsible, dangerously so, to call ethnic minority people racial slurs like Uncle Toms, coconuts, house slaves or house negroes for daring to think differently."^[73][74]

In a Black History Month debate in the House of Commons in October 2020, she reiterated the government's opposition to primary and secondary schools teaching white privilege and similar "elements of critical race theory" as uncontested facts.^[75] ConservativeHome readers voted Badenoch's speech on critical race theory 2020 'speech of the year', in which she said that any school that teaches "elements of political race theory as fact, or which promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law".^[76]

During her leadership campaign launch, Badenoch expressed criticism of identity politics in a 2022 article for The Times, arguing that "identity politics is not about tolerance or individual rights, but the very opposite of our crucial and enduring British values."^[77]

Colonialism

Regarding the United Kingdom's colonial history, Badenoch has argued that "there were terrible things that happened during the British Empire, there were other good things that happened, and we need to tell both sides of the story".^[78]

In leaked WhatsApp messages, 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. She also stated that prior to colonisation, "There was never any concept of 'rights', so [the] people who lost out were old elites not everyday people".^[79]

LGBT rights

In 2019, Badenoch abstained on a vote to extend same-sex marriage rights to Northern Ireland.^[80] In March 2021, Badenoch was encouraged to "consider her position" as an Equalities Minister by Jayne Ozanne, one of a group of three government LGBT advisers who quit their roles due to the decision by the government not to include transgender conversion therapy in its plans to ban gay conversion therapy, with Ozanne describing a speech by Badenoch on the issue as being "appalling" and the "final straw".^[81]

As Minister of State for Equalities, Badenoch opposed plans by the Financial Conduct Authority to allow trans employees to self-identify in the workplace,^[82] and opposed gender-neutral toilets in public buildings.^[83]

In 2021, Vice News said they had received leaked audio from 2018 in which Badenoch mocked gay marriage and referred to trans women as "men".^[84][85]

In 2023, Badenoch gave a speech before the House of Commons in which she announced regulations stripping the ability of transgender migrants from certain countries to acquire documents in the UK to match those brought from their countries of origin. This was stated as being due to these countries allowing trans people to transition "too easily".^[86] Badenoch went on to announce the government's plans to move forward on a conversion therapy ban, while saying that gender affirming healthcare for young people who question their gender was "a new form of conversion therapy" designed to turn gay children transgender, further stating that a draft bill would address the concern that clinicians are "fearful of giving honest clinical advice to a child because if they do not automatically affirm and medicalise a child’s new gender they will be labelled transphobic".^[87] She further announced plans to ban social transition in British schools, claiming the existence of an "epidemic" of children being told they are transgender as the reason.^[88][89]

Comment on millennials

In 2018, Badenoch commented on sexual morality attitudes among millennials:

When I look at a lot of the stuff that you see on social media about how – I think it's a generational thing as well – younger people look at appropriate behaviours and what is a sexual advance, what is sexual harassment and so on; to me, it's actually becoming a lot more puritanical than anything I ever saw in my 20s or in my teens.^[90]

Hacking of Labour MP's website

In 2018, 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 Badenoch's apology, but the matter was reported to Action Fraud, the UK's cyber crime reporting centre.^[91][92][93]

Tulip Siddiq comments

In 2019, 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.^[94]

Journalist Nadine White incident

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". White subsequently made her Twitter account private, citing the abuse she received.^[95] Badenoch's actions were criticised by both the National Union of Journalists and the Council of Europe's Safety of Journalists Platform.^[96][97] She was defended by the Prime Minister's press secretary who commented that it was all a "misunderstanding".^[98]