Marvel movies make the cut on Badenoch’s desert island

Kemi Badenoch sees the latest defections to Reform from her party as a “steadying of the ship” and a helpful way to lose “those who are not team players, who were more focused on their own personal ambition”.

The leader of the opposition gives her response to the recent political departures as she becomes the latest cast-away on Desert Island Discs, where she will be marooned with only her eight favourite records and a single chosen luxury: the entire 23-film set of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Infinity Saga. She admires, she says, the way “the heroes triumph in the end, but often have to sacrifice something”.

Among the tracks she picks are Michael Jackson’s Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough and two songs from the musical Hamilton.

At 16, Badenoch chose to come from Nigeria to England, where she worked at McDonald’s in the evenings and wrote many letters home. Then, studying for a degree in engineering at Sussex University, she found politics. “I had become a Conservative,” she tells host Lauren Laverne.

Badenoch says her mother encouraged her to be calm: “‘Be still’, she said. She didn’t like people who got very over emotional or were shouting. She worked very hard to try to make me someone who would behave properly.”

Were the efforts successful, asks Laverne? “Mostly successful. I still do a bit of shouting. Mainly at children who won’t pick up their shoes from the hall or be quiet when I am on a work call.” Badenoch also reveals she is “very strict” with the screen habits of her three children, “though probably not strict enough”.