LONDON — Britain’s Conservative Party on Saturday elected Kemi Badenoch as its new leader as it tries to rebound from a crushing election defeat that ended 14 years in power.

Mrs. Badenoch (pronounced BADE-enock) defeated rival lawmaker Robert Jenrick in a vote of almost 100,000 members of the right-of-center party. She is the first Black woman to lead a major British political party.

Mrs. Badenoch replaces Prime Minister Sunak, who in July led the Conservatives to their worst election result since 1832. The Conservatives lost more than 200 seats, taking their tally down to 121.

The new leader’s daunting task is to try to restore the party’s reputation after years of division, scandal and economic tumult, hammer Prime Minister Starmer’s policies on key issues including the economy and immigration, and return the Conservatives to power at the next election, due by 2029.

“The task that stands before us is tough but simple,” Mrs. Badenoch said in a victory speech to a roomful of Conservative lawmakers, staff and journalists in London.

“Our first responsibility as His Majesty’s loyal opposition is to hold this Labour government to account,” she said. 

Mrs. Badenoch continued: “Our second is no less important. It is to prepare over the course of the next few years for government, to ensure that by the time of the next election, we have not just a clear set of Conservative pledges that appeal to the British people, but a clear plan for how to implement them, a clear plan to change this country by changing the way that government works.”

A business secretary in the previous Conservative government, Mrs. Badenoch was born at London to Nigerian parents and spent much of her childhood in the West African country.

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

A critic of multiculturalism and self-proclaimed enemy of wokeness, Mrs. Badenoch has drawn criticism for saying recently that “not all cultures are equally valid,” and for suggesting that maternity pay was excessive.

In a race that has lasted more than three months, Conservative lawmakers reduced the field of six candidates in a series of votes before putting the final two to the wider party membership.

Both finalists came from the right of the party, and argued they can win voters back from Reform U.K., the rightist party led by populist politician Nigel Farage that has eaten away at Conservative support.

The party also lost many voters to the winning party, Labour, though, and to the centrist Liberal Democrats, and some Conservatives worry that tacking right will lead the party away from public opinion.

Associated Press