Britain’s Conservative Party on Saturday elected Kemi Badenoch as its new leader in a bid to bounce back from a crushing election defeat that ended 14 years in power.

Badenoch defeated rival lawmaker Robert Jenrick in a vote of almost 100,000 members of the right-wing party. She is the first black woman to lead a major British political party.

Badenoch replaces former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who led the Conservatives to their worst election result since 1832 in July. The Conservatives lost more than 200 seats, bringing their total to 121.

The new leader’s daunting task is to try to restore the party’s reputation after years of division, scandal and economic tumult, undermine Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s policies on key issues including the economy and immigration, and bring the Conservatives back to power at the next election. no later than 2029.

Badenoch, a business secretary in the previous Conservative government, was born in London to Nigerian parents and spent much of her childhood in the West African country.

The 44-year-old former software engineer portrays himself as a disruptor, advocating a free-market economy with low taxes and promising to ‘rewire, reboot and reprogram’ the British state.

A critic of multiculturalism and self-proclaimed enemy of wokeness, Badenoch has drawn criticism for recently saying that “not all cultures are equally valid” and for suggesting that maternity benefits were excessive.

In a race that has lasted more than three months, conservative lawmakers narrowed the field to six candidates in a series of votes before awarding the final two to the broader party membership.

Both finalists came from the right of the party and argued they can win back voters from Reform UK, the far-right, anti-immigrant party led by populist politician Nigel Farage, which has eaten away at the Conservatives’ support.

But the party also lost many voters to the winning party, Labor, and to the centrist Liberal Democrats, and some conservatives fear the rightward turn is taking the party away from public opinion.