Eight things we learned from Kemi Badenoch’s Desert Island Discs
Kemi Badenoch has been leader of the Conservative Party since November 2024. On Desert Island Discs, she speaks about growing up between the UK, Nigeria and the United States, arriving in Britain alone as a teenager, finding her political identity, and the values she has carried with her along the way.
From boarding school in Nigeria to flipping burgers in London, here are eight things we learned from her Desert Island Discs…
1. Her early life began in London, but Nigeria shaped her
Kemi Badenoch was born in Wimbledon, London, in January 1980, to Nigerian parents. “I was born into a wealthy family,” she tells presenter Lauren Laverne. Her mother had been referred to a Harley Street obstetrician because her endometriosis was not treatable in Nigeria at the time. A few months later, the family returned to Lagos. Kemi grew up there through a period of political instability. “When I was born, Nigeria was democratic but most of my childhood was coups, military dictatorships and very, very bad economic policies.”
Those changes slowly eroded her family’s wealth, “so by the time I was 16, we didn’t have very much at all.”
2. Secondary school in Nigeria was tough
As a child, Kemi moved schools frequently but eventually settled at a secondary school in Nigeria that she describes as being like a ‘borstal’ – a type of youth detention centre, abolished in the early 1980s. She had imagined something very different. “I’d been reading lots of [the Enid Blyton novels] Malory Towers. I thought it would be like that.”
It was more like Lord of the Flies. All of the girls at school had a machete and a hoe to cut the grass. It was very much survival of the fittest.Kemi Badenoch on her school experience in Nigeria.
Instead, she found something tougher. “It was more like Lord of the Flies. All of the girls at school had a machete and a hoe to cut the grass. It was very much survival of the fittest.”
She struggled to adapt. “I was very rebellious,” she says. “I was always saying what I thought.” Her grades slipped, she lost weight, and she stopped eating properly because she did not like the food and would exchange her meals for books.
3. She moved to London alone at 16
By her mid-teens, Nigeria was under military dictatorship and her family’s finances had collapsed. Her mother’s salary as a university professor was unpaid, and her GP father had lost many patients after refusing to sign dishonest sick notes. In that turmoil, Kemi’s parents realised she could return to the UK because she had been born there, so they sent her there for A-levels.
She came alone, staying with a family friend, and supporting herself with a job at McDonald’s. Staying in touch was hard. “There was a lot of letter writing,” she said. “I have loads of letters which I wrote home.” Phone calls were rare. “International calls were very expensive in the 1990s.”
But she stresses, “the homesickness was not as much as the excitement”.
4. Calmness and self-control matter to her
Kemi’s fourth disc choice is the hymn Be Still for the Presence of the Lord, which was played at her wedding. “It reminds me of my mother,” she explains. “She always said, ‘be calm, be still’. She didn’t like flappiness. She didn’t like people who got overly emotional or hysterical. No shouting. She worked very hard to try and make me someone who behaves properly.”
How successful was she? “I still do a bit of shouting,” Kemi laughs, “usually at children who aren’t picking up their shoes or won't be quiet when I'm on a work call.”
5. She’s her family’s go-to tech fixer
Both of Kemi’s parents were medics, and for a long time she assumed she would follow the same path. “It didn’t occur to me not to,” she says. But things changed once she began working. “Engineering was something that I was much better suited to.”
Before university, she worked as an apprentice at an architecture firm. “I was a one-woman IT department… I learned how to fix computers.” That practical knowledge stuck. “I can still put a computer together and take it apart. Whenever there is any technical issue in the house, I’m the person to fix it.”
6. Joining the Conservative Party gave her a purpose – and a husband
While working as a systems analyst in banking in 2005, Kemi joined the Conservative Party almost casually. “I thought it would be a fun thing to do,” she says. It changed her life. That is where she met her husband, Hamish. “We just got on and we became friends. He’s always supportive, has always been by my side. He's my inspiration. There's no way I could have done any of this without him.”
Her sixth disc, Love Is All Around by Wet Wet Wet, was the song she chose for the first dance at her wedding. “It talks about ‘there's no beginning, there'll be no end’ to love. I love you. I always will. That is what I would want to say to my husband. He's an amazing man. So, this one's for him.”
7. She cares about queuing
Badenoch is wary of identity politics and what she sees as cultural fragmentation, and she is precise about what she means by culture. “Culture is about standards, norms, behaviours,” she says. “How you treat people, how you behave.”
She offers a simple example. “Queuing, that’s a cultural thing. Some people don’t think you need to queue. We should queue.”
8. She has a message for young people
Kemi reflects on why she stays in politics, despite its difficulties. “ I could have done other things that would've given me an easier life,” she explains, “but it is about wanting to give a future to young people, not just my kids, but other people's children as well.”
She is “despondent” when she hears young people talking “as if the world is going to end before they even get a start”. Things can improve, she insists. “I want them to know that there are people out there who are working very hard to make sure that we can give them that brighter future.”
