Kemi Badenoch enters Conservative leadership race as Suella Braverman steps down | Kemi Badenoch

Kemi Badenoch, Secretary of State for Housing and Communities, has entered the Conservative leadership race with a promise to return the Tories to government by 2030.

Badenoch, the bookmakers’ favourite to succeed Rishi Sunak, said she would focus on renewing the Conservative brand around the idea that “above all, [the government] “The state must serve its own citizens” and “we cannot control immigration until we reconfirm our belief in the nation-state.”

In a Times editorial, Badenoch wrote: “If I have the privilege of serving, we will tell the truth again.

“That’s why my campaign is launching today with an explicit goal: to renew our party for 2030 – the first full year we can return to government and the first year of a new decade.”

Shadow treasurer John Glen said the Conservatives needed to go through “a rigorous process” that involved “exhibiting a degree of humility” and having a clear plan for how to regain the trust of the British people.

Badenoch became the sixth Conservative to enter the race, joining Dame Priti Patel, Mel Stride, Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick in the race to replace Sunak.

“Our public services will never fully recover from the pandemic until we remember that government must do some things right, not everything wrong,” Badenoch writes.

“At the foundation of our renewal, and even of the coming together of the conservative family, is a set of sound principles about how our economy should work and for whom it should work.

“Our nation’s wealth rests on our historic ability to harness the ingenuity and labor of our people, and the willingness of many to trade risk for reward. It has become a dirty word, but our renewal must also mean a renewal of capitalism.”

Grassroots Conservative supporters appear to be angry with MPs for not putting their preferred choice, Suella Braverman, on the ballot.

Members of the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO), founded by Tories furious after the departure of Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss, are questioning why the party has so far “defied its core supporters”, warning that senior MPs could “quickly fall from grace”.

A poll of 3,412 of the CDO’s 14,000 members asking which of Braverman, Badenoch, Patel, Jenrick, Tugendat and Cleverly they would prefer to be leader found Braverman was the favourite with 1,153 votes, followed by Badenoch with 475.

Claire Bullivant, founder of the Conservative Post, said: “If Suella is excluded from the election it will only serve to widen the divide between ordinary party members and MPs. MPs need to remember who supported them, handed out leaflets, knocked on doors and endured abuse during a very difficult campaign.”

“Unfortunately, this unacceptable behaviour by some MPs will have consequences. We are already seeing thousands of MPs fleeing to the Reform Party. If Suella is not even allowed on the ballot paper, this swing to Nigel Farage will only get worse and faster.”

On Sunday night, Braverman announced she would not run, saying she had received the necessary support but chose not to.

“While I am grateful to the 10 MPs who wanted to nominate me as party leader, putting myself on the ballot is not enough,” she wrote in an article for the Telegraph.

“There is no reason, for better or worse, that someone like me should be running for leader of the Conservative Party when most MPs disagree with my diagnosis and prescription” for what went wrong and how to fix it, she said.

She said the party’s disastrous election result was due to its failures on migration, taxation and “transgender ideology”. “I’ve been called crazy, evil and dangerous to the point where the Conservative Party doesn’t want to hear that. So I’m going to bow down here,” she said.

According to a Savanta poll conducted between July 19 and 21, Patel is the least popular candidate in the race, down 28 points with the public and seven points with 2024 conservative voters.