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Kemi Badenoch became the Conservatives’ new leader and the first Black woman to head a major British political party on Saturday, after winning a leadership contest on a promise to return the party to its founding principles.

Badenoch, 44, replaces former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and has pledged to lead the party through a period of renewal after its resounding defeat at Britain’s July election, saying it had veered towards the political center by “governing from the left”.

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On the right of the Conservative Party, Badenoch will likely back policies to shrink the state and challenge what she says is institutional left-wing thinking, saying it is time to defend the principles of free speech, free enterprise and free markets.

Badenoch became the Conservatives’ fifth leader since mid-2016 after winning 57% of party members’ votes in the final stage of a months-long contest that saw a field of six whittled down to two. She beat a former immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, who won 43% of the votes.

Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed her victory, saying “the first Black leader of a Westminster party is a proud moment for our country”.

Badenoch herself has publicly said she prefers not to focus on her race.

Asked at the Conservative Party conference earlier this year how it would feel to become the first Black woman leader of the party, she said: “I am somebody who wants the color of our skin to be no more significant than the color of our hair or the color of our eyes.”

For some Black voters in London, a city which tends to favor the Labour Party and has a Labour mayor, support for Badenoch will depend on what she does now as leader of the Conservatives.

“They (the Conservative Party) are not more approachable because of the fact that they’ve now got a Black person,” said Imani Samuels, a student. “It will just depend on what she’s doing.”

Asked about Badenoch’s comment on her skin color, Samuels replied: “She should be proud of that, and she should step forward with her Blackness, because to have such a position and to be Black and a woman should be something she’s very proud to say.”

Vaughan Gething became the first Black leader of the Welsh Labour Party earlier this year, but resigned after just four months as the first minister of Wales after a wave of ministerial resignations in protest over his leadership.

Sunak, who is of Indian origin, became Britain’s first prime minister of colour in October 2022 after winning a race to lead the Conservatives that year.

‘Tell the truth’

Badenoch promised on Saturday to tackle problems in the party head-on.

“The time has come to tell the truth,” she told the audience at the final count of the leadership contest, promising to answer the main questions over how the Conservatives lost the July election so badly.

“It is time to get down to business, it is time to renew.”

With forthright views on everything from what she calls identity politics to the value of officials, Badenoch attracts both strong admirers and detractors. She is certain to shake up the Conservatives, who saw their contingent of lawmakers in the 650-seat parliament fall in July to 121 from 365 seats in 2019.

With the Labour government off to a bumpy start, some Conservatives are increasingly optimistic that they could win back power at the next election, which has to be held in 2029.

But some more centrist Conservatives worry Badenoch might alienate not only the more moderate wing of the party but also some voters who were won over by the centrist Liberal Democrats at the last election.

The former trade minister’s time in government was often marked by disputes with the media, celebrities and her own officials. But her no-nonsense approach has also won over many supporters, including the Conservative members who chose her over Jenrick.

“The task that stands before us is tough, but simple, our first responsibility as his majesty’s loyal opposition is to hold this Labour government to account,” she told party members.

“Our second is no less important, it is to prepare over the course of the next few years for government.”

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the U.S. with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

Any further attacks from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just ahead of the U.S. presidential election this Tuesday.

“The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front,” Khamenei said in video released by Iranian state media.

The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack, nor the scope. The U.S. military operates on bases throughout the Middle East, with some troops now manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery in Israel.

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier likely is in the Arabian Sea, while Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday that more destroyers, fighter squadrons, tankers and B-52 long-range bombers would be coming to the region to deter Iran and its militant allies.

The 85-year-old Khamenei had struck a more cautious approach in earlier remarks, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed.” Iran has launched two major direct attacks on Israel, in April and October.

But efforts by Iran to downplay the Israeli attack faltered as satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showed damage to military bases near Tehran linked to the country’s ballistic missile program, as well as at a Revolutionary Guard base used in satellite launches.

Iran’s allies, called the “Axis of Resistance” by Tehran, also have been severely hurt by ongoing Israeli attacks, particularly Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran long has used those groups as both an asymmetrical way to attack Israel and as a shield against a direct assault. Some analysts believe those groups want Iran to do more to back them militarily.

Iran, however, has been dealing with its own problems at home, as its economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions and it has faced years of widespread, multiple protests. After Khamenei’s speech, the Iranian rial fell to 691,500 against the dollar, near an all-time low. It had been 32,000 rials to the dollar when Tehran reached its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Gen. Mohammad Ali Naini, a spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard which controls the ballistic missiles needed to target Israel, gave an interview published by the semiofficial Fars news agency just before Khamenei’s remarks were released. In it, he warned Iran’s response “will be wise, powerful and beyond the enemy’s comprehension.”

“The leaders of the Zionist regime should look out from the windows of their bedrooms and protect their criminal pilots within their small territory,” he warned. Israeli air force pilots appear to have used air-launched ballistic missiles in the Oct. 26 attack.

Khamenei on Saturday met with university students to mark Students Day, which commemorates a Nov. 4, 1978, incident in which Iranian soldiers opened fire on students protesting the rule of the shah at Tehran University. The shooting killed and wounded several students and further escalated the tensions consuming Iran at the time that eventually led to the shah fleeing the country and the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The crowd offered a raucous welcome to Khamenei, chanting: “The blood in our veins is a gift to our leader!” Some also made a hand gesture — similar to a “timeout” signal — given by the slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2020 in a speech in which he threatened that American troops who arrived in the Mideast standing up would “return in coffins” horizontally.

Iran will mark the 45th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis this Sunday, following the Persian calendar. The Nov. 4, 1979, storming of the embassy by Islamist students led to the 444-day crisis, which cemented the decades-long enmity between Tehran and Washington that persists today.