UK Prime Minister race: Nigeria’s Kemi Badenoch eliminated in fourth round

The development has now left the three remaining candidates, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to convince Members of Parliament they deserve a spot in the final two ahead of the next round of voting Wednesday afternoon, July 20.

Ms Badenoch, the former equalities minister, who mounted an impressive and insurgent campaign, was praised for her vision and ‘honest politics’, which saw her perform much more strongly than expected.

Ms Badenoch was eliminated from the race with 59 votes, while Rishi Sunak had the highest vote of 118, followed by Penny Mordaunt with 92 votes and Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary with 86 votes in the fourth ballot.

The battle line is now drawn between Ms Mordaunt and Ms Truss for the coveted second spot to be decided by Members of Parliaments on Wednesday afternoon.

Olukemi Olufunto Badenoch is a British politician who has served as Member of Parliament for Saffron Walden since 2017. A member of the Conservative Party, she served as Minister of State for Local Government, Faith and Communities and Minister of State for Equalities from 2021 to 2022.

Born in Wimbledon, London, to Nigerian parents, Badenoch spent parts of her childhood in Lagos and the United States before returning to the United Kingdom at 16. After graduating from the University of Sussex, she was a software engineer at Logica before studying law at Birkbeck, University of London. Badenoch later pursued a career in banking, working for the Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Coutts.