Badenoch has described her background as "middle-class" but said in 2018 "Being middle class in Nigeria still meant having no running water or electricity, sometimes taking your own chair to school" and claimed that her family went through "periods of poverty" due to inflation.

[21] She returned to the UK at the age of 16 to live with a friend of her mother's owing to the deteriorating political and economic situation in Nigeria, which had affected her family.

[33][34] At the 2010 general election, she contested the Dulwich and West Norwood constituency and came third, behind the Labour Party incumbent MP Tessa Jowell and the Liberal Democrat candidate Jonathan Mitchell.

[53] In January 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.

[61] 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".

[67][68][69] On 6 July 2022, Badenoch resigned from the 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.

[70] Following Johnson's resignation, Badenoch launched a bid to succeed him as Conservative Party leader,[71] stating that she wanted to "tell the truth" and that she advocated "strong but limited government".

[81] 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.

When it reported the story, The Guardian said Badenoch had not broken any rules and quoted an Equality Hub spokesperson saying the "appointment was made following a full and open competition".

[88] In December 2023, Badenoch decided to refuse an application, which was said to have been approved by the British Phonographic Industry, for Music Export Growth Scheme (MEGS) funding from Belfast based rappers Kneecap.

[89] The rap group claimed that the actual reason for the refusal was that a poster for their 2019 'Farewell to the Union' tour, which depicted Boris Johnson tied to a large firework rocket, had angered the Conservative Party.

[90] On 29 November 2024, the Belfast High Court ruled that the British government had acted illegally by withholding the £14,250 in funding on the sole basis of the band's political views, with the UK’s Department for Business and Trade agreeing that the original decision by Badenoch had been “unlawful and procedurally unfair”.

[91] Under Badenoch's direction, negotiations for the Canada–United Kingdom Trade Continuity Agreement was paused in January 2024 after the British government resisted Canadian demands to lift the ban on hormone treated beef being sold to UK consumers.

[98] In July 2024, The Guardian reported that at least three officials working under Badenoch had experienced bullying in the Department for Business and Trade and that she had created an intimidating atmosphere while she was in charge.

[99] According to this report, the officials felt "pushed out" by "bullying and traumatising" behaviour and claimed that individuals were regularly humiliated and occasionally left in tears after working with her.

[104] In the days leading up to the announcement, Badenoch released a statement criticising the "dirty tricks" of rival candidates,[105] after The Spectator published an article[106] quoting unflattering comments posted by a user named "Kemi" from several years previously on the Naijablog website.

[124] In a January 2025 speech, Badenoch criticised past actions of the Conservative Party regarding issues such as delivering Brexit and lowering immigration, admitting that they had told the public "what they wanted to hear first and then tried to work it out later.

[129][130][131] In response, Phillips said that the previous Conservative government, of which Badenoch was a part, had also supported a local inquiry in Oldham, while Starmer accused Badenoch of only jumping "on the bandwagon" after recent tweets from Elon Musk (who called Phillips a "rape genocide apologist" and suggested she was attempting to shield Starmer from blame since he led the Crown Prosecution Service when the abuse occurred), highlighting how she never raised the issue during her previous seven years in government, which included periods when she served as the Children’s Minister and the Minister for Women and Equalities.

[132][133][134][135][136] Farage responded by accusing both major parties of failing victims over the years and a week later announced that Reform UK would raise money to appoint "independent arbiters" to examine gang rapes across Britain if the government refused to do it itself.

[145][146] 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.

"[148][149] 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.

"[23][142] In December 2018, Badenoch praised the Home Secretary’s decision to remove the annual limits on work visas and to allow students from the European Union to stay in the UK for six months after graduating [152].

In September 2024, Badenoch wrote an article for The Sunday Telegraph in which she argued that "We can not be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid.

"[165] By 2024, Badenoch argued that China represented a threat through "economic coercion" and a deliberate strategy to "flood the market, driving other nations’ industries out of business."

Badenoch argued that Britain should participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and embed itself in trade agreements within the Indo-Pacific region to create more economic competition with China.

[175] 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".

[177][178] A government spokesperson rejected these claims, saying that "This 2018 comment has been taken out of context, with the Minister making a clear point about striking the balance for equality and fairness when there are multiple and often competing demands between different groups.

[179] 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" as, in her view, "we are seeing I would say almost an epidemic of young gay children being told that they are trans and being put on a medical pathway for irreversible decisions and regretting what they have done", 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".

[180] She further announced plans to ban social transition in British schools, according to which transgender-identifying children would be permitted to self-identity as the gender identity of their choice without parental consent or knowledge.

[184] In a 2024 pamphlet distributed as part of her campaign for leadership of the Conservative Party, Badenoch said that politics has shifted away from class "in the old sense – increasingly, whether you are high income does not drive your voting patterns.