Kemi Badenoch, Conservative party leader, has claimed that there has been a rise in online “ethno-nationalism” in Britain and that she has been the target of “hysterical” personal attacks.
Badenoch declared at the Tory conference in 2023 that Britain was “the best country in the world to be Black”, but on Sunday said she had suffered abuse because of her ethnicity.
Her comments came against a backdrop of a heated political debate on immigration, with rightwing groups participating in protests against the use of hostels to house asylum seekers.
Badenoch, born in Britain to Nigerian parents, told the Sunday Times newspaper that some critics had used racial “tropes” to denounce her leadership of the Conservative party.
“There’s a certain cadre of people who clearly can’t cope with the fact that I won this and I’m doing it,” she said. “The level of personal attacks from anonymous people, it’s hysterical.
