Kemi Badenoch says being Tory leader is ‘going as well as it possibly could’
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Despite a gaffe-filled first two months in the job, Kemi Badenoch said: ‘I was expecting it to be much worse.’. Kemi Badenoch has said her time as Tory leader has gone “as well as it possibly could” and that she will not be hurried into taking definitive policy positions.
Despite a gaffe-filled first two months in the job, Ms Badenoch told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme “I was expecting it to be much worse”. “And one of the things that I’m really pleased about is that the party has sort of downed tools on the internecine warfare, and the actual being in parliament and seeing a real Labourgovernment reminds everyone who the real opponent is,” Ms Badenoch added.
As well as facing criticism for the Tories’ lack of a policy platform, much of the focus of her tenure has been on issues such as a diplomatic row between her and Nigeria and her dislike of sandwiches. Hitting back at criticism of her leadership on Monday, Ms Badenoch said she will publish party policy “as it is thought through”.
She promised that “these things will come”, telling the BBC to “watch this space”. She has benefited from a record-breaking fall in Labour’s poll ratings under Sir Keir Starmer, who has faced a backlash after scrapping millions of pensioners’ winter fuel payments and ending tax breaks for family farmers.
But she is facing a fierce challenge from Nigel Farage, with the latest Techne UK tracker poll for The Independent revealing one in five Tory voters have switched to his Reform UK since the general election. Labour is sitting on 27 per cent of the vote, with the Conservatives narrowly behind on 26 per cent and Reform on 21 per cent, the poll showed.
