Kemi Badenoch publicizes she is standing for Conservative management

Kemi Badenoch threw her hat into the ring for the Tory leadership last night with a promise to trigger a ‘renewal for capitalism’.

The former Business Secretary said it had become a ‘dirty word’ in recent years and that reclaiming it was crucial if the Tories are to bounce back at the next election.

She said the party needed to ‘renew’ itself by ‘starting from first principles’ and pledged that it will start speaking ‘the truth again’ on everything from controlling immigration to reforming public services.

She becomes the sixth MP to throw their hat in the ring, after Dame Priti Patel, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat, Robert Jenrick and Mel Stride.

Former home secretary Suella Braverman had been tipped to run, but last night confirmed she will not launch her own bid. The deadline for entering is 2.30pm on Monday.

Writing in the Times, Ms Badenoch said: ‘If I have the privilege to serve, we will speak the truth again.

‘That is why today my campaign is launching with an explicit focus on renewing our party for 2030 – the first full year we can be back in Government and the first year of a new decade.

‘We will renew by starting from first principles: we can’t control immigration until we re-confirm our belief in the nation state and the sovereign duty it has, above all else, to serve its own citizens.

‘Our public services will never fully recover from the pandemic until we remember that government should do some things well, not everything badly.

‘At the foundation of our renewal, and indeed the reassembly of the conservative family, is a confident set of principles about how our economy should work, and for whom it should work.

‘The wealth of our nation is built upon our historic ability to capture the ingenuity and industry of our people, and the willingness of many to trade risk for reward.

‘It’s become a dirty word, but our renewal must also mean a renewal for capitalism.’

However, her campaign is expected to be rocked by claims of ‘bullying’ behaviour by her and alleged impropriety committed by one of her aides.

The Guardian is said to have conducted the potentially damning investigation, expected to be published in the coming weeks.

‘It’s going to be a rocky start for her campaign,’ a Tory source said.

Ms Badenoch’s team say the Guardian investigation is the product of a disgruntled former special adviser she dismissed.

Her team has also claimed that dirty tricks are at play in the leadership contest after a ‘dirty dossier’ of online comments she made nearly 20 years ago was published.

Ms Badenoch has said it was ‘both amusing/alarming the extraordinary lengths people will go to to play dirty tricks’ and said the public were put off politics by ‘petty’ and ‘puerile’ methods.

She entered the fray after Dame Priti vowed to put ‘unity before personal vendetta’.

Standing on a platform of ‘unite to win’, she urged colleagues not to descend into ‘a soap opera of finger-pointing and self-indulgence’ in the wake of the landslide General Election defeat.

All contenders need a proposer, seconder and eight other backers to stand.

MPs will narrow the field down to four who will make their case at the Tories’ annual party conference from September 29 to October 2.

The final two will be put to a vote of party members in an online ballot that will close on October 31, with the result on November 2.

MPs expect Mr Tugendhat to be the most popular among the Parliamentary party.

However, a poll for the grassroots Conservative Post website last week found that Ms Braverman was the most popular among party members, followed by Ms Badenoch.