Kemi Badenoch lost her faith in God over the horrific case of Austrian sex offender Josef Fritzl, the Tory leader has revealed.
In an interview with the BBC, Mrs Badenoch said she was ‘never that religious’ while growing up but ‘believed in God’ and would define herself as a ‘Christian apologist’.
But this changed in 2008 when she read reports that Fritzl had imprisoned and repeatedly raped his daughter, Elisabeth, in his basement for 24 years.
Mrs Badenoch, whose grandfather was a Methodist minister, told Amol Rajan: ‘I couldn’t stop reading this story. I read how she prayed every day to be rescued.
‘And I thought, I was praying for all sorts of stupid things and was getting my prayers answered. I was praying for good grades and for the bus to come on time.
‘Why were my prayers answered and not this woman’s? It was like someone blew out a candle.’
But she insisted that while she had ‘rejected God’, she had not rejected the religion and remained a ‘cultural Christian’, adding that she wanted to ‘protect certain Christian values’.
During her interview, due to be broadcast tonight, Mrs Badenoch said her tenure as leader was going ‘well’.
In an apparent dig at Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, she said: ‘There are pretenders.
‘We’re the only party on the centre-Right, and the only ones who still believe in values like making sure the Government is not getting involved in everything so it can focus on things like securing our borders.’
She went on to argue that parents ‘worried about their children getting snatched’ had created a generation that lacked the ‘resilience’ to face life’s problems.
Mrs Badenoch then responded to figures suggesting a quarter of people aged 16-24 said they had a mental disorder, saying: ‘I think they think they have a mental disorder, I don’t think they all have a mental disorder.’
