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Kemi Badenoch
28 quotes
“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 (born 1980) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a speech at a fringe meeting during the Conservative Party conference (3 October 2023), as cited in "Suella Braverman warns of ‘hurricane of migrants’ — as it happened", The Times
“[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 (born 1980) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a hearing of the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee (13 December 2023), as cited in "Kemi Badenoch: We must protect single-sex spaces because predators outnumber trans people", The Times (14 December 2…
“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 (born 1980) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a series of posts on X, as cited in "Kemi Badenoch brands David Tennant 'rich, lefty, white male celebrity' in trans row", The Telegraph (25 June 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 (born 1980) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Migrants who come to Britain must uphold its traditions, not change them", The Telegraph (28 September 2024)
“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 (born 1980) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interviewed on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips (29 September 2024), as cited in "Tory leadership contest shows striking lack of focus on issues that cost party the election", Sky News (29 September 2024)
“[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 (born 1980) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speaking at a Conservative Party conference fringe meeting (1 October 2024) organised by The Spectator magazine, as cited by Jessica Elgot in "Some civil servants so bad they should be in prison, says Kemi Badenoch", Th…
“[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 (born 1980) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Is Kemi Badenoch the Next Margaret Thatcher?" (at 46m15s), Honestly with Bari Weiss, 12 December 2024
“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 (born 1980) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Is Kemi Badenoch the Next Margaret Thatcher?" (at 55m45s), Honestly with Bari Weiss, 12 December 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 (born 1980) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Is Kemi Badenoch the Next Margaret Thatcher?" (at 1h11m39s), Honestly with Bari Weiss, 12 December 2024
“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 (born 1980) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Is Kemi Badenoch the Next Margaret Thatcher?" (at 1h17m48s), Honestly with Bari Weiss, 12 December 2024
“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 (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1980) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Katy Balls and Michael Gove, "'I will die protecting this country'’: Kemi Badenoch on where she plans to take the Tories?", The Spectator ([12] December 2024]
“Well, take a look at President 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 (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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 (born 1980) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (Arc) conference at Excel in London (17 February 2025), as cited in "Read: Kemi Badenoch’s full speech at the Arc Conference", The Spectator (17 February 2025)
“Parliament needs to be able to decide who comes into the country, for how long, and who needs to leave, and that does include travel bans.>br />On a country-specific basis it's much tougher, it's often more vague. But I think there are scenarios where that is viable. That doesn't mean that I agree with what Donald Trump has done, I haven't actually seen the list of countries that he’s banned people from. I'm much more focused on (...) what’s happening here.”
Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a speech at the Royal United Services Institute (6 June 2025), as cited in "Badenoch calls for Trump-style travel bans", The Telegraph (6 June 2025).
“He is catching arrows rather than stopping the archer.”
Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) first seen 2026 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Sir Keir Starmer's response to the 2026 Iran conflict at Prime Minister's Questions on 4 March 2026, BBC News
“This is the next step I'm taking as I continue changing the Conservative Party. Our policy agenda has changed. We have dumped the net zero targets bankrupting the UK, and we’re leaving the ECHR so we can finally deport those who come to our country illegally.”
Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We need candidates with the five Cs: they must be clever, have charisma, communication skills, conviction and, most importantly, be Conservative.”
Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) first seen 2026 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: This Z-list Labour Parliament is everything that’s wrong with British politics", The Telegraph (30 May 2026).
“If someone still believes in net zero targets that make energy more expensive and are destroying industry, they are not coming back. If someone thinks that the ECHR can be wished away rather than being dealt with properly, they are not serious.”
Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) first seen 2026 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Conservative Party is for serious people, not a retirement home for failed politicians", The Telegraph (9 July 2026).
“I want people to know that this is a new Conservative Party [...] It's not just going to be making the mistakes of the past. We understand what went wrong, we've listened, we've changed policies, we're going to have a brand new party full of new people. We lost 250 MPs at the last election. We need new people. We want people with business experience. People who understand what the job of legislating is. The Conservative Party that is coming back is a new and different party.”
Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) first seen 2026 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Badenoch blocks Shapps from standing for Tories'", The Telegraph (23 July 2026).
“He is spending every day working to solve the very problem which he knew he had caused previously. He's going up and down the country training people and the Conservative Party believes in second chances. This is not just someone that we've picked up who is a convicted criminal - this is somebody who is actively working to help communities, especially Jewish communities.”
Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) first seen 2026 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ex neo-Nazi activist selected as Tory candidate", BBC News (4 August 2026).
“He is standing to be a councillor in Somerset. It is a local platform looking at parking, sorting out bins. That’s what councillors do. It’s not a national platform. [...] I have much higher thresholds for what it takes to be a Conservative MP. This man is not standing to be an MP. There's a huge difference. [...] At a local level, where someone is actively working on anti-radicalisation, fighting for the Jewish people, knowing the harm he caused … this is a judgement call and I think in this case, I do think that he should be allowed to stand.”
Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) first seen 2026 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speaking on the Today programme (BBC Radio 4, 5 August 2026), as cited in "Former neo-Nazi withdraws as Tory council candidate after row", The Times (5 August 2026).
“[On Bonehill-Paine's decision] While I am sad that Joshua feels he won't be given the space to explain his position and represent his community, I am glad he is going to work with me and the party on tackling radicalisation. If we are going to stop extremism and antisemitism we are going to need help from those people who were part of the problem, but have now changed and are being part of the solution. [...] Piling on them and trying to get them cancelled may be sport for other parties, but this is a different Conservative Party.”
Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) first seen 2026 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a post on X (5 August 2026), as cited in "Ex neo-Nazi activist withdraws as Tory election candidate", BBC News (5 August 2026).
“[On Robert Jenrick's defection to Reform UK] I realised he wasn't just leaving because he was unhappy, he wanted to burn the Conservative Party to the ground. That is what Reform wants, not to hold Labour to account or transform this country for the better, but to destroy our party. I am never going to let that happen.”
Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reform is the party of traitors. You can’t trust them. Nigel Farage is doing my spring cleaning.”
Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]hey are a flash in the pan if I have anything to do with it. We cannot have people running our country who lie and lie and lie so easily, deceive their colleagues and people around them. We need to have honest people and that is what I am doing.”
Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 [[w:2024 United Kingdom general election|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 (born 1980) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Announcing a proposal to amend the Equality Act 2010 in "Tory vow to end abuse of gender laws by predators", The Times (2 June 2024)