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Kemi Badenoch, the new leader of the Conservative Party, has said that her approach to the economy will be “completely the opposite” to that of Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Badenoch gave a first glimpse of her policy priorities, including on reversing the VAT hike for private schools. She conceded that the Conservatives “got a lot of things wrong” ahead of their historic election defeat, including on immigration and tax, but refused to give a “post-mortem” of her predecessors and claimed the Partygate scandal was “overblown”.
Badenoch said she wanted to show the party was united with a meritocratically selected front bench. With appointments to her shadow cabinet expected in the next couple of days, Badenoch explained that her party was not going to be able to oppose anything in terms of getting legislation through, adding that she could only “make the argument that raising taxes in this way… is not going to grow our economy and will leave all of us poorer”. However, when asked whether she would reverse the VAT hike on private schools, Badenoch was definite, saying it is a tax on aspiration, and it won’t raise any money and was therefore against their principles.
Badenoch criticised her predecessor, Rishi Sunak’s leadership, saying that he had lost trust with voters because “promises on immigration and tax were not kept, and that is something that we need to change”. She also spoke on Boris Johnson’s leadership, saying that there were some serious issues that led to her resignation over his handling of the Chris Pincher affair. However, in regards to the Partygate scandal, she says that Johnson walked into “a trap”. Badenoch said her focus was on rebuilding trust and creating a perception of unity within the party, although she said that was “very tricky”, particularly when “not everybody wants to serve”.
Addressing the loss of Conservative voters to Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage at the last election, Badenoch denied she would only be offering voters “more of the same”. She said that Reform is nothing but a spoiler for the Conservatives and just creates more and more Labour government if they do not deliver on their core values to serve the British people accordingly
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