UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has delivered a forceful defence of her British identity and that of her children, accusing figures within Reform UK of questioning who can legitimately claim to be English.
Speaking at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Badenoch said she would not accept arguments suggesting that her mixed-race children could be excluded from British or English identity because of their heritage.
“I am Black. I am British,” Badenoch declared, drawing a standing ovation from Conservative Party members.
Her remarks came amid an increasingly heated debate within British politics over national identity, race and what it means to be English, with Badenoch using her speech to draw a sharp political distinction between the Conservatives and Reform UK.
The Conservative leader criticised what she described as attempts by political figures to question the national identity of people because of their ethnic background.
She also referred to her own children, saying she did not want to live in a country where politicians debated whether her mixed-race children were English.
Badenoch further rejected calls for a political alliance or accommodation between the Conservatives and Reform UK, telling her party that the two political movements were fundamentally different.
The speech marked one of her strongest attempts to confront the identity debate directly while simultaneously positioning the Conservative Party against Reform UK’s growing influence on the British right.
Badenoch, who was born in Britain to Nigerian parents, has faced questions about race and national identity throughout her political career. Her response at the conference was framed as both a personal statement and a broader political argument about belonging in modern Britain.
She invoked Black English footballers including Ian Wright and John Barnes as examples of figures whose English identity, she argued, had historically not been subjected to the same kind of questioning.
The intervention comes as Reform UK continues to compete with the Conservatives for voters on the political right, with issues including immigration, national identity, welfare and the economy featuring prominently in the rivalry.
Badenoch has sought to distinguish her party from Reform while also presenting the Conservatives as the political force capable of restoring economic growth, strengthening national institutions and maintaining Britain’s shared identity.
Her conference address also included policy proposals on taxation, welfare, economic growth and public spending, as she attempted to rebuild the Conservative Party’s electoral position following its heavy defeat at the 2024 general election.
But beyond the policy announcements, her remarks on race and national identity are likely to remain among the most closely discussed parts of the speech, particularly as Britain’s political debate becomes increasingly focused on questions of immigration, belonging and the definition of national identity.
Badenoch’s message was ultimately both personal and political: that Britishness should not be determined by race, and that the Conservative Party would confront rather than accommodate what she described as divisive attempts to question the identity of British citizens.