Kemi Badenoch said her belief in God changed in 2008 when she read the vile story of Josef Fritzl, who locked and repeatedly raped his daughter Elisabeth in a cellar for 24 years
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has said the case of Austrian sex offender Josef Fritzl “killed” her belief in God.
In an interview with the BBC, she said she was “never that religious” growing up but “believed there was a God” and defined herself “as a Christian apologist”.
But this changed in 2008 when she read the vile story of Fritzl, who locked his daughter Elisabeth in a cellar for 24 years, repeatedly raping her and fathering seven children with her.
Ms Badenoch, whose maternal grandfather was a Methodist minister, said: “I thought to myself, no human being should have had to experience what this woman did. “And maybe because I was very close to my father. So the idea of a father doing that to his own daughter for me was a level of disgust and abhorrence that I’d never experienced.
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“I couldn’t stop reading this story. And I read her account, how she prayed every day to be rescued. And I thought, I was praying for all sorts of stupid things and I was getting my prayers answered. I was praying to have good grades, my hair should grow longer, and I would pray for the bus to come on time so I wouldn’t miss something.
“It’s like, why were those prayers answered and not this woman’s prayers? And it just, it was like someone blew out a candle.”
She said that while she had “rejected God”, she had not rejected Christianity and remained a “cultural Christian”, saying she wanted to “protect certain things because I think the world that we have in the UK is very much built on many Christian values”.
During her interview, which was due to be broadcast last night, Ms Badenoch also said her tenure as Conservative leader was going “well”, but admitted: “This was never going to be an easy job.
“I knew when I was taking on this role that it was going to be the most difficult thing I ever had to do. Opposition is difficult, but opposition after a historic defeat, immensely difficult.”
In an apparent dig at Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, she said her job was to “make sure that people can see that we are the only party on the centre-right”.
Ms Badenoch said: “There are pretenders. We’re the only party on the centre-right, and we’re the only ones who still believe in values like living within our means, personal responsibility, making sure that the government is not getting involved in everything so it can focus on the things it needs to look at, like securing our borders.”
She went on to defend previous comments saying the fact she had worked at McDonald’s made her working class, saying: “I had to work to live. That, for me, is what being working class is. It’s the lifestyle that you have. You have to work, to survive.”
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