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Kemi Badenoch marks a year since taking over as Conservative Party leader on Sunday, November 2. Here, the PA news agency sets out a brief timeline of Mrs Badenoch’s leadership of the Tories. – November 2024 Mrs Badenoch won the Conservative leadership contest to succeed Rishi Sunak following the party’s drubbing at the general election. She saw off five other senior Conservatives in the contest: Sir James Cleverly, Dame Priti Patel, Sir Mel Stride, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat. All of them have since gone on to occupy positions in her shadow ministerial team. – December 2024 Mrs Badenoch engaged in a spat with Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, claiming his party’s online membership counter was providing a false number and was ticking up automatically. The Reform leader threatened legal action, but it did not materialise. – January 2025 The Conservative leader began setting out her stall for the party with a speech at the start of the new year. In it she criticised the Conservatives’ failed promises to deliver on lowering immigration, and the decision to pursue Brexit without a plan. She insisted to the media she would not make policy announcements off the cuff, but would slowly build a new political platform through discussion with Tory members. That same month, Mrs Badenoch was accused of jumping on a “bandwagon” after criticising the Government for not instigating a grooming gangs inquiry in Oldham, Greater Manchester. Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s criticism of the decision resulted in an online pile-on for Home Office minister Jess Phillips. Mrs Badenoch faced questions about her own party’s record on dealing with the grooming gang scandal. The Conservative suffered heavy defeats in the May local elections. Mrs Badenoch apologised to her party over the result. Ahead of time, at the launch of the Tory local election campaign, she had warned it would be a difficult round of voting for the party following the general election loss. – July 2025 Senior Conservative figures announced they were defecting to Reform UK in a major challenge for Mrs Badenoch’s leadership. They included former Conservative chairman Jake Berry, and David Jones, a former Welsh secretary. – September 2025 High-profile defections to Reform continued to prove a headache for the Conservative leader. Sitting Conservative MP Danny Kruger joined Reform and promised to help get it ready for government. Other Tory figures to join the party included former culture secretary Nadine Dorries, and former health minister Maria Caulfield. – October 2025 Mrs Badenoch’s first Conservative party conference as leader took place. The event was described as subdued compared with previous Conservative conferences. But it also resulted in a series of major policy announcements for the Tories, setting out the future direction under the new leader. These included confirmation – after a review led by former justice minister Lord Wolfson – that the party will support leaving the European Convention on Human Rights in order to tackle migration. Mrs Badenoch also made the surprise announcement that the Tories would scrap stamp duty, a tax paid by house buyers, on the purchase of their main homes.
