Link Copied!
Kemi Badenoch Quotes (0-1980)
President, Politician, Leader
About Kemi Badenoch
Olukemi Olufunto "Kemi" Badenoch (/ˈbeɪdnɒk/ BAYD-nok; née Adegoke, 2 January 1980) is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, in 2017 she was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Saffron Walden in Essex, having previously served as a Member of the London Assembly. Badenoch supported Brexit in the 2016 European Union membership referendum. After a series of junior ministerial positions under Boris Johnson from 2019 to 2022, she served as Secretary of State for Business and Trade from 2023 and President of the Board of Trade and Minister for Women and Equalities from 2022, until the 2024 general election. Following Labour's return to government after the election, Badenoch was a candidate to become leader of the Conservatives.
Best Kemi Badenoch Quotes
Shortest
Earliest
Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Kemi Badenoch quotes.
“Reform [UK] is another left-wing party. They're arguing for the same things: nationalization, two-child benefit cap. They [Labour] would love to have a political fight like that.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2025–present)
“Well, take a look at President Trump. He's shown that sometimes you need that first stint in government to spot the problems, but it's the second time around when you really know how to fix them. And it starts by telling the truth.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2025–present)
“One of the reasons I don't like the term 'woke' is because I think it disguises just how bad this stuff is. This is civilization ending philosophy, where really bad ideas are being smuggled in under the guise of civil rights and so on.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2024)
“How do you know what an authoritative source is when everyone is trying to make the news rather than report the news? That's the new thing it our age. A lot of media doesn't want to observe and report. It wants to influence. It wants to be on the pitch rather than reporting.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2024)
Kemi Badenoch controversially asserted at a Conservative Party conference fringe event that a small percentage of civil servants deserve imprisonment for actions like leaking secrets.
“[On civil servants] There's about 5-10% of them who are very, very bad. You know, should-be-in-prison bad. [...] Leaking official secrets, undermining their ministers … agitating. I had some of it in my department, usually union-led, but most of them actually want to do a good job. And the good ones are very frustrated by the bad ones.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2024)
Speaking at the Conservative Party conference, Suella Braverman defended the UK's multiracial society while cautioning against immigration rhetoric that could be misconstrued.
“We live in a multiracial society, we're very, very comfortable with that because if were weren't we wouldn't have the prime minister, we wouldn't have the home secretary or business secretary that we have. But we have to be very careful about how we explain and express immigration policies so that people aren't getting echoes of things that are less palatable.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2023)
“What's decompressing, what’s that? ["Does she break for lunch?"] What's a lunch break? Lunch is for wimps. I have food brought in and I work and eat at the same time. There's no time… Sometimes I will get a steak ... I'm not a sandwich person, I don’t think sandwiches are a real food, it's what you have for breakfast. [...] I will not touch bread if it's moist.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2024)
In a Sky News interview, an unnamed interviewee lauded Israel's actions, including the assassination of a Hezbollah leader, framing it as a morally clear path to Middle East peace.
“I would be congratulating Prime Minister Netanyahu. I think what they did was extraordinary.Israel is showing that it has moral clarity in dealing with its enemies and the enemies of the West as well. [...] Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation, and I think that being able to remove the leader of Hezbollah, as they did, will create more peace in the Middle East.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2024)
“Culture is more than cuisine or clothes. It's also customs which may be at odds with British values. We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not. I am struck for example, by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel. That sentiment has no place here.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2024)
Speaking on LBC, Kemi Badenoch accuses Nigel Farage of aiming to dismantle the Conservative Party, framing it as a historically significant institution worth preserving.
“Nigel Farage is still against many Conservatives, including some of my colleagues. [...] What he wants to do is destroy the Conservative Party.The Conservative Party is an institution; it is the longest-running party in the history of the world. I think that what we should be talking about is how to make sure it keeps going from strength to strength, not trashing it, destroying it, or taking it over.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2024)
Speaking before the Women and Equalities Committee, Kemi Badenoch argued single-sex spaces must be protected from exploitation by predators, not transgender people.
“[Predators exploitation of loopholes] We see it with men exposing themselves in bathrooms. We see it with people trying to access single-sex spaces such as women's prisons when they have been convicted for violence against women, and their victims are being forced to refer to them with female pronouns. That is not right.So we have to make sure that we can sweep all that away and when we do, life will get better for transgender people.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2023)
Speaking at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, Kemi Badenoch envisioned a "new conservative century" for the UK, warning of dire consequences if the moment is lost.
“[I]n the United Kingdom, my party is starting the largest renewal of policy and ideas in a generation. ... If we get this right, we stand at the dawn of a new conservative century with so much opportunity and possibility. If we throw this opportunity away because of anger or self-doubt or weakness [o]ur country and all of western civilisation will be lost. And that is why we, the next generation of conservatives, must lead the world back from the precipice.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2025–present)
“The middle-class now has changed. It has become a lot more bureaucratic and we are producing more and more people from universities who are going into a bureaucratic job rather than a genuine producing job where you're adding value. And that, I think, is why the growth is reducing at the same time as we're facing increased competition from other countries that are not spending a lot of time on bureaucracy. The EU is the classing of this genre; It's all about pumping out regulation.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2024)
In a Spectator interview, Kemi Badenoch discusses her complex relationship with her Nigerian heritage, emphasizing her Yoruba identity and distancing herself from other ethnic groups.
“I find it interesting that everybody defines me as being Nigerian. I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity [Yoruba]. That's what I really am. I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where the Islamism is, those were our ethnic enemies and yet you end up being lumped in with those people.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2024)
Amidst a trans rights debate, Kemi Badenoch accused David Tennant, a Labour supporter, of ideological blindness and attacking her as the "only black woman in government."
“I will not shut up. I will not be silenced by men who prioritise applause from Stonewall over the safety of women and girls.A rich, lefty, white male celebrity so blinded by ideology he can't see the optics of attacking the only black woman in government by calling publicly for my existence to end.
Tennant is one of Labours celebrity supporters. This is an early example of what life will be like if they win.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2024)
“[About planned changes within her party:] It's not going to happen overnight. I get lots of criticizm of 'You haven't changed anything!' You know, it's been four weeks I think, I have four and a half years to do this, maybe a bit less, but there is a plan. But you have to do things systematically and properly. I'm a systems analyst, I don't rush into things. And I think this is the biggest challenge for people: Having an engineer and a systems analyst in charge rather than a politician or a lawyer who just talks, talks, talks. I'm not somebody who starts with the rethoric.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2024)
“It wasn't until predators started exploiting the loopholes that we are having to tighten this.
It is the behaviour of people who are choosing to exploit rights given to transgender people — because the definition is very loose — that we are now having to look at what we can do in order to protect women and children who are the most vulnerable in those single-sex spaces.
It is not easy, the ideal situation would have been if the predators had not chosen to exploit this loophole.
[Badenoch "insisted she was not saying transgender people were predators."] But there are more people who are predators than there are people who are trans.”
It is the behaviour of people who are choosing to exploit rights given to transgender people — because the definition is very loose — that we are now having to look at what we can do in order to protect women and children who are the most vulnerable in those single-sex spaces.
It is not easy, the ideal situation would have been if the predators had not chosen to exploit this loophole.
[Badenoch "insisted she was not saying transgender people were predators."] But there are more people who are predators than there are people who are trans.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2023)
“The law is confused because times have changed and words in law are being re-interpreted to meanings quite different from what legislators intended. Clarification is required. Not just to protect the privacy and dignity of women and girls, but also to protect those people with gender dysphoria for whom the law was set up to protect. These transpeople were going about their lives in peace, until predators started exploiting loopholes in the law by calling themselves trans with no evidence beyond their self-identification.
Sex and gender, terms once used interchangeably in the law, now mean different things with significant implications. This is being exploited by all sorts of activist organisations, most notably Stonewall for their own agenda. That is why we are today pledging that, if we form a government after the [general] election, we will clarify that sex in the law means biological sex and not new, redefined meanings of the word. The protection of women and girls' spaces is too important to allow the confusion to continue.”
Sex and gender, terms once used interchangeably in the law, now mean different things with significant implications. This is being exploited by all sorts of activist organisations, most notably Stonewall for their own agenda. That is why we are today pledging that, if we form a government after the [general] election, we will clarify that sex in the law means biological sex and not new, redefined meanings of the word. The protection of women and girls' spaces is too important to allow the confusion to continue.”
- Kemi Badenoch, 2024)
What Kemi Badenoch Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Kemi Badenoch shared regarding contemporaries.
Kemi Badenoch on David Miller (sociologist)
Speaking in Parliament, Kemi Badenoch addressed concerns that criticisms of Israel were being used as a pretext for antisemitism, emphasizing the need to protect Jewish students from harassment.
“It is therefore important to underline that this ruling does not change the fact that while academics have the right to express views, they cannot behave in a way which amounts to harassment of Jewish students.”
Kemi Badenoch on Kate Forbes
“I do think that those people who are withdrawing support from her, I'd ask "why did you support her in the first place"? Because I don't think what she's saying is new, and I think it shows a level of unseriousness of many people who engage in political activity and commentary, where they don't take things seriously in terms of "why am I supporting this person"?”
About Kemi Badenoch
Olukemi Olufunto "Kemi" Badenoch (/ˈbeɪdnɒk/ BAYD-nok; née Adegoke, 2 January 1980) is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, in 2017 she was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Saffron Walden in Essex, having previously served as a Member of the London Assembly. Badenoch supported Brexit in the 2016 European Union membership referendum. After a series of junior ministerial positions under Boris Johnson from 2019 to 2022, she served as Secretary of State for Business and Trade from 2023 and President of the Board of Trade and Minister for Women and Equalities from 2022, until the 2024 general election. Following Labour's return to government after the election, Badenoch was a candidate to become leader of the Conservatives.