Do we like them?

Do we like Kemi Badenoch?

Our score: 2 out of 10. A pattern of campaigning to let trans women be barred from single-sex spaces and against net zero, with only a thin bit of good to set against it.

Kemi Badenoch leads the Conservatives, and she does it blunt. This week on LBC she said that if the NHS can't survive without immigration, then “the model needs to change”, and called for more homegrown nurses on better pay. We couldn't open a full profile of her early life, so this one sticks to the record we could read.

Then there's the PMQs stoush in February 2026. She told Keir Starmer his backbenchers were being labelled a “paedo defenders party”, after reports that voters had shouted it at Labour MPs over the Mandelson scandal. Labour's Natalie Fleet called it “just really disgusting” and Katie Amess, daughter of murdered MP David Amess, said she hoped Badenoch would apologise. She said she would “absolutely not apologise” and called the criticism “shroud waving”.

On the harm test, trans people are where she falls down. As equalities minister she asked the EHRC for advice on amending the Equality Act, and in 2024 she said the Tories would make sex in law mean biological sex, so trans women could be barred from single-sex spaces. The EHRC warned of “possible disadvantages” for trans people. She says it's about protecting women and girls' spaces, and where you land depends on whether you read it as that or as stripping trans people of protection, but this page counts it as harm. A leaked 2018 recording, reported by VICE, also had her asking “what are transsexuals looking for?”, which a government spokesperson said was taken out of context.

On the planet, she calls herself a net zero sceptic but not a climate change sceptic. DeSmog reports her leadership manifesto cited research from a US group it says compared climate science to believing the earth is flat, and that she took £10,000 for her campaign from the chair of Net Zero Watch. DeSmog campaigns against climate denial, so weigh the framing, but the facts are her own manifesto and funding. She also called Labour's ban on new North Sea licences a “foolish decision”.

The race row is the bit where she deserves some sympathy. In her 7 October conference speech she said Reform UK figures were questioning Britons' identities on the basis of skin colour. Online accounts, some with 155,000 followers, posted that she is not English: that's abuse aimed at her, and it counts for nothing against her. Standing up to it publicly, rather than shrugging it off, is a point in her favour.

This week's push is the Henry Nowak case. She told ITV News that if the family's account is true, “it looks like there has been a cover-up”, said she lacks full confidence in the police watchdog and wants longer sentences for crimes using religious objects. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she has full confidence in the IOPC, which is investigating two officers. Whether that is leadership or opportunism is a matter for the reader.