'I'm not afraid of a fight' KEMI BADENOCH tells Lynn Barber. 'People call me rude but I just have a thicker skin than most. I have to learn to mellow for people who don't have the hide of a rhino' By LYNN BARBER FOR YOU MAGAZINE Published: 08:01, 4 January 2025 | Updated: 08:01, 4 January 2025 e-mail View comments I meet Kemi (everyone calls her Kemi) at a studio where she is being photographed for our cover.
There are racks of clothes and about a dozen people standing around while she gets dressed behind a screen. One of the standers-around introduces himself as her Spad and asks what this interview will be about. I say personal stuff rather than politics and he says, ‘Oh, good’, because he won’t need to brief her.
Top, Reiss. Skirt, Cefinn. Boots, Dune I ask someone else if she’s arrived on time because she has a reputation for being notoriously unpunctual (she was half an hour late for her first Cabinet meeting), but he says that, on the contrary, she’s arrived early.
And then she steps out from the screen wearing a gold blouse and black skirt and gives a little twirl and everyone tells her she looks great. Which, at 45, Kemi Badenoch does. Despite a runny nose, she’s fit and toned (she works out with a personal trainer once a week).
She likes the clothes she’s modelling so much she asks to buy them. When the shoot is finished, I ask if she enjoys doing all this – dressing up, posing for photos. ‘No, I don’t but it’s all part of the job,’ she replie.
