Following the election, she served as a Special Adviser to Michael Howard for Community Relations and was appointed by David Cameron as Vice Chair of the Conservative Party with specific responsibility for cities.
[19] On 1 December 2007, Warsi travelled to Khartoum with the Labour peer Lord Ahmed to mediate in the Sudanese teddy bear blasphemy case.
[20][21] On 12 May 2010, David Cameron appointed Warsi as Minister without Portfolio in Cabinet, when she succeeded Eric Pickles as Chairman of the Conservative Party, which she held jointly with Andrew Feldman.
[26] At the Foreign and Commonwealth Office she was responsible for country-specific policies concerning Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh along with international organisations.
"[35] She also expressed concern about the way recent decisions had been made in the Foreign Office,[41] as well as the Conservatives' refusal to recognise the State of Palestine.
[42] Warsi described the tipping point for her resignation was David Cameron's refusal to condemn Israeli shelling that killed four Palestinian children as they were playing football.
[42] On 11 March 2024, The Guardian reported that Conservative Party donor Frank Hester said in 2019 that Labour MP Diane Abbott made him "want to hate all black women" and that "she should be shot".
[43] Hester apologised to Abbott on Twitter after the article published, stating that his comments were "rude" and had "nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin".
[45][46] The gay rights organisation Stonewall, along with several Labour politicians, questioned her suitability for a high-profile Conservative Party role, owing to leaflets issued during her 2005 election campaign that claimed that lowering the age of consent in 2001 had "[allowed] school children to be propositioned for homosexual relationships" and that homosexuality "undermines family life".
[48] Speaking in December 2013 at a BNP Paribas event in support of Kaleidoscope Trust, she apologised for her leaflets and said the Conservative Party had been "on the wrong side of history" on gay rights.
[49] Following a confrontation in November 2009 by a group of protestors in Luton accusing her of not being a proper Muslim, a man was jailed for six weeks for a public order offence of throwing an egg at Warsi.
[54][55][56] In the April 2016 issue of Dabiq magazine, The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant declared her a murtadd (or apostate) for being among a group of "overt crusaders" who "directly involve themselves in politics and enforcing the laws of kufr".
[57] On 20 June 2016, three days before the referendum on membership of the European Union, Warsi said that she could no longer support the Leave campaign because of what she claimed was its xenophobia, and would vote to remain within the EU.
She accused Conservative Chair Brandon Lewis of a "woefully inept" response to recent complaints and added that MP Zac Goldsmith should receive "mandatory diversity training" following his unsuccessful attempt to beat Sadiq Khan to become Mayor of London.
[64] In September 2010, during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to England and Scotland, Warsi said the Labour Government appeared to have viewed religion as "essentially a rather quaint relic of our pre-industrial history.
"[68] In November 2013, Warsi told an audience at the University of Cambridge that faith was being put back at the "heart of government", as it had been under Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.
The Labour Opposition urged a full police investigation into her expenses after it was alleged that she claimed up to £2,000 in rent despite staying rent-free in the London home of a Conservative Party donor, Dr Wafik Moustafa.
[71] Sir Alex Allan found Warsi to have twice breached the Ministerial Code, though he concluded these were minor and noted that she had apologised.
The second was when she invited her business partner (Abid Hussain) to meet David Cameron at a Number 10 Downing Street Eid event.
[72] The Conservative Party leadership was criticised in some quarters for holding Baroness Warsi to account on the Ministerial Code while apparently having a more relaxed approach to Jeremy Hunt, who was Culture Secretary at that time.
[78] She set up the Baroness Warsi Foundation to fund projects that seek to improve social mobility, increase gender equality and promote religious understanding.