Kemi Badenoch

Kemi Badenoch is the leader of the Conservative Party and MP for North West Essex, having been in parliament since 2017. She was elected Conservative leader in November 2024, beating Robert Jenrick by 56% to 44%. Her leadership campaign was run from the London home of Neil Record, chair of Net Zero Watch, who donated £10,000 to her campaign. Since then, Badenoch and her family have stayed at Record's properties on two further occasions — a £14,000 week-long shadow cabinet residential at his Gloucestershire estate in February 2025, and a £7,500 family retreat in February 2026. She describes herself as a "net zero sceptic", having publicly championed net zero as a government minister before disowning it as a leadership candidate. In March 2025 she declared net zero "impossible" without "bankrupting" the country and pledged to repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act; Carbon Brief found her claims were unsupported by evidence, and the LSE's Grantham Research Institute said she "does not tell the truth" about her own climate record. She also spoke at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in February 2025.