Kemi Badenoch: Anti-woke campaigner making waves

Kemi Badenoch has been the surprise package of the Conservative leadership contest.

Rarely mentioned in speculation about who might succeed Boris Johnson before the contest started, she has already seen off some big names and is currently fourth in the race after the second round of the MPs' ballot.

Seen as being on the right of the party, the 42-year-old former equalities minister is standing on an "anti-woke" platform - and is arguing for the state to be slimmed down.

But she insisted she will not enter the tax cut "bidding war" with the other leadership candidates.

Born in Wimbledon, south London, to parents of Nigerian origin, she grew up in the US and Nigeria, where her psychology professor mother had lecturing jobs.

She returned to the UK at the age of 16, and studied for her A-levels at a college in south London while working at a branch of McDonalds.

After completing a degree in computer systems engineering at Sussex University, she developed a career as a systems analyst before moving into banking.

She was an associate director of private bank Coutts and later digital director of the influential right-wing magazine The Spectator.

Ms Badenoch's leadership campaign team are making much of her status as a "fresh face".

She joined the Conservative Party at the age of 25, and spent several years trying to get elected to Parliament and the London Assembly without success.

She eventually achieved her ambition of becoming an MP at the 2017 general election in the safe Conservative seat of Saffron Walden, Essex.

As an equalities minister, she enraged many on the left and won admirers on the right when she challenged the notion that there is widespread institutional racism in the UK.

Often labelled a "culture warrior" - a tag she disputes - she has been outspoken on issues like gender-neutral toilets (she is against them).

At her campaign launch venue, her team taped handwritten "men" and "ladies" signs on the gender neutral toilet doors.

In her speech, she vowed to "discard the priorities of Twitter and focus on people's priorities instead", adding: "We have been in the grip of an underlying economic, social, cultural and intellectual malaise."

And she took aim at what she claimed were examples of government waste.

"While the priority of the £300bn the government spends on procurement should be value for money, in truth this is being undermined by tick-box exercises in sustainability, diversity and equality.

"These are good things but they need to be done properly. Why are we spending millions on people's jobs which literally didn't exist a decade ago, like staff wellbeing co-ordinators in the public sector?"

In an LBC interview, she said she had only ever experienced prejudice from left wingers, and that the diverse line-up of contenders to be Tory leader proved that the party does not have problem with prejudice.

"I came to this country aged 16 and now I am standing for prime minister - isn't that amazing? I was born in this country but I didn't grow up here.

"That is amazing. And I don't understand why people want to ignore all of the good things and only focus on the bad things and use the bad things to tell the story."