Mrs Badenoch, 44, was born in Wimbledon, but spent her childhood in Nigeria before returning to the UK as a teenager

‘This is my country. I love it the way it is. I don’t want it to become like the place I ran away from. I want it to get better and better, not just for me, but for that next generation.’

Mrs Badenoch is facing Robert Jenrick in the final run-off in the contest to succeed Rishi Sunak as the leader of the Conservatives. The outcome will be decided by the votes of about 140,000 Tory party members, and the results of the contest are set to be declared on November 2.

Kemi’s interview in full: There’s no room for those who want to enjoy luxury of being out of work just because they want to be out of work

Kemi Badenoch has a reputation for straight talking – and she does not disappoint.

Some critics complain she is too abrasive to ever win over the public, while supporters insist she is the breath of fresh air the Tories need after being sent packing by the public in July.

She herself says she is ‘sick of the b*******, that has led politicians to tiptoe around difficult subjects like gender identity and Britain’s colonial history for years.’

‘I want to cut the c**p,’ she says, adding with a laugh: ‘Can I say that in the Daily Mail?’

With that out of the way, she offers a frank analysis of the election result, saying simply: ‘People did whatever they could to kick us out.’

This, she says, has caused ‘confusion’ about how to respond – should the Tories chase votes lost to Reform on the right, or those picked up by the Lib Dems on the left?

Her opponent Robert Jenrick has set his sights firmly on Reform, with a series of hardline policies on immigration.

Mrs Badenoch, a natural Thatcherite, argues that that the public ‘are not paying attention to the Conservative Party’ at present – and says the Tories need to focus on putting their own house in order rather than writing a manifesto for an election that is four years away.

‘We need to breathe first and look for what kind of person we want as leader, not just who is telling us what we want to hear,’ she says pointedly.

‘It needs somebody who is starting from first principles, somebody who is starting with conviction.’

Warming to her theme, she goes on: ‘At some point, the public are going to be looking to see what else is out there. And when they look up, I want them to see something that’s completely different in terms of its outlook. It is refreshed. It is renewed. It is united. It’s talking about the stuff that means something to people. It’s rebuilt trust.’

It would certainly look different if she wins. No black woman has ever led a mainstream political party in the UK. Labour hasn’t managed a female leader at all in its 124-year history.

Her opponent Robert Jenrick has set his sights firmly on Reform, with a series of hardline policies on immigration

Would it help prove her argument (which drove the left nuts) that Britain is ‘the best country in the world to be black’?

She says this is ‘not why I’m doing it,’ but adds that the fact it is even possible ‘shows that we are a meritocracy. It also shows that we are a colour blind society. I do not think we should be culture blind, but I do think we need to be colour blind’.

If she wins – and the bookmakers have installed her as favourite – Mrs Badenoch plans to spend up to two years ‘renewing’ the party before coming forward with a detailed policy platform.

In the meantime, she is not short of opinions that give pointers to where a Badenoch Tory Party might go.

Scrapping Labour’s VAT raid on private schools would be the ‘first thing’ she would do if she eventually wins power.

‘Labour don’t believe in aspiration,’ she says. ‘If they believed in aspiration, they wouldn’t be putting VAT on private school fees. I know people who live very modest lives, who save for private school and they’re having to take their children out. That’s not fair. It’s a tax on aspiration.’

The self-declared ‘Net Zero sceptic’ would also overhaul the UK’s approach to climate change and does not completely rule out revisiting the 2050 target.

On education, she wants a new curriculum to restore ‘pride in our country’.

On benefits, the former business secretary says there is no room for people who want to enjoy ‘the luxury of being out of work, just because you want to be out of work’.

There is also an intriguing hint that she believes more people will have to work into later life in the future.

‘The biggest challenge that we have is that we are getting older, but people still want to live as if we’re not getting older,’ she says. ‘We need to figure out how you can start work age 20 or 25, retire at 65 and then live on your retirement for 30 years. That doesn’t really add up anymore. And some of the things that we’ve done, you know, increasing the retirement age, for example, I think, are important.’

Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick called for a legal cap to keep net migration below 100,000 a year

On Mr Jenrick’s flagship plan to leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), she says she agrees in principle that ‘we need to leave’, but warns it will be ‘a hell of a job’, given how enmeshed it is in the governing fabric of the UK.

In the meantime, she wants to focus on why it is that some European countries, also operating under the ECHR, appear to find it easier to deport foreign undesirables than we do.

‘It’s a judgment thing, more than an ECHR thing,’ she says. ‘Judges are choosing to interpret the law in a different way, and I want us to start looking at the whole system.’

Mrs Badenoch bridles at suggestions from her opponent that she would lead the party down ‘rabbit holes’ if she becomes leader, arguing that her work as equalities minister helped halt Nicola Sturgeon’s plan to allow gender self-ID in Scotland, and dragged Labour to a less extreme position on the issue.

Women, she says, still face an ‘undercurrent of physical violence’ in a way which ‘many men don’t understand’. She asks an aide to dig out a letter she was sent by a woman who was ‘raped in a loo by a man dressed as a woman’.

‘I think saying that fighting for women’s rights, fighting for single sex spaces is a rabbit hole, shows someone who has never been in that position of vulnerability,’ she says.

‘When we look at things like the children who are being sterilized, the single sex space issue, the grooming gangs issue, they all have something in common, which is that people were scared. Were scared to speak out because it was not a good look. And I spoke out when it was risky.’

Mrs Badenoch was unimpressed by an intervention from the Jenrick-supporting Tory veteran Sir Christopher Chope who suggested last week she was too ‘preoccupied with her own (three) children’ to lead the party.

‘He’s basically told people that I’m a busy working mum – it says more about him than it does about me,’ she says.

But, she concedes, there is not much time at the end of the day to relax. She gets home too late to cook most nights. Novels have gone by the wayside: ‘Now I read WhatsApps because I just get information,’ she reveals forlornly.

She finds herself picking holes in TV thrillers like Slow Horses: ‘I find myself thinking, that’s not what the Cobra room looks like and you would never get away with that.

Instead, she’s turned recently the cult animated Netflix show, Blood of Zeus, to unwind. For those unfamiliar with the fantasy show, it depicts the violent tale of the struggle for power between the gods of Mount Olympus. Much blood is spilled. Opponents beware.