T he sign that Kemi Badenoch, who on November 2nd was elected leader of Britain’s Conservatives, was operating on a different plane from her rivals came at the party’s conference in October. While they busied themselves with cheesy selfies and cheesier merchandise,

Ms. Badenoch, 44, whose parents were immigrants from Nigeria, becomes the first Black woman to head a party that has had three other female leaders — Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss. She succeeds Rishi Sunak, who became the first nonwhite British prime minister after taking over the Tories, Britain’s oldest party, in 2022.