Kemi Badenoch MP

You've said that you found your own views quite at odds with the other students around you [at Sussex University]. Tell me about that.

But I think by this time I have become a conservative. I just don't know it. I don't know that I'm political, but I'm exposed to a particular type of left-wing ideology that I really don't like. It's very patronizing. You know, I would listen to students talk about Africa from a place of ignorance, but also superiority. You know, we need to help the Africans and we have to stop them. There were big campaigns about stopping people from buying powdered milk from Nestle, and I said, a lot of those women that you're trying to stop have AIDS. We're coming off the tail of the big AIDS epidemic, especially in southern Africa. They can't feed their babies with breast milk. What's the matter with you? They were so obsessed with fighting the corporation that they couldn't actually see who was needing these things and who was being harmed. Of course, people who don't have money aren't going to spend it on powdered milk if they can feed the child themselves. And it was that sort of thing.

You've said modern Britain is a multiracial country, but we must never become a multicultural one. What do you mean by that? And is it something you still believe?

I think a lot of people think of culture as the food you eat and the clothes you wear, the music you listen to, and yes, that is part of it. But for me, culture is about standards, norms, behaviors, what is acceptable. And I think that if we have lots of different competing cultures where things that I think are unacceptable become acceptable, we will change the very nature of our society. … I don't think Britain is multicultural now. I mean, not in a meaningful sense. You know, going out for a curry is not multiculturalism. People are talking about food tastes. Deciding on the role of women and what their rights are. That's a different culture. … And I think it's quite important because if you allow a free for all and let everybody do whatever everybody wants to do without something that we all have to unite us, I think we will fragment. And that's something I don't want to see.

Your dad had wanted you to go into medicine. You lost him four years ago, so he didn't see you become leader, but he did see you become an MP. What did he think of that, and what does your mum think of where you are now?

I don't think that I could ever have stood in that 2022 leadership contest that propelled me into cabinet if he hadn't died. He died that year, just a few months before. And it felt like the worst thing that had ever, that could ever happen to me had already happened. So he told me before he died, I know you're going to go all the way. And he said something. He said that my brother, sister and I were his greatest achievements. And it's, you know, I get emotional thinking about it because he knew he was dying by this point. My father died of brain cancer. My mother, on the other hand, when my father was proud of me going into politics, my mother was tearing her hair out. She's like, why would you do this? You're working in banking. You've got a good job. You're making money. Why do you want to go into this horrible career? Because for her, politicians were not good people. She had a very, very dim view of politicians thinking they were all out for themselves, especially in Nigeria, that there was too much corruption. And so I think part of what I'm trying to do now in politics is prove to her that politicians can be good people. You know, your daughter is one. And she is proud in a different way.