Kemi Badenoch: My approach will “pay off eventually”
Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has insisted her approach to changing the struggling party will “pay off eventually” as she battles dwindling voter support.
In an interview with BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Badenoch stressed that she would not “rush out” new policies and instead take the time needed to “get it right”.
She acknowledged that the Conservative party may take a “small” political hit for adopting this strategy, but added that “nothing good comes quickly”.
She said: “I make sure that when I announce something I think about how it is going to impact people.”
“It’s not about being the first to announce a policy. It’s about having the best policy. That is what I’m offering.”
“I said I want to do politics differently, doing it differently means being patient and taking our time to get it right.”
Conservative future
Badenoch is facing increasing questions about her performance following her first year as leader ahead of the party’s conference kicking off in Manchester, after poor outcomes in both the opinion polls and local elections.
The party has lost increasing voter support to Reform UK, while some former Conservative MPs, as well as sitting MP Danny Kruger, have also defected to Farage’s party.
When probed over if she would resign if the Conservative’s fortunes did not improve, Badenoch said: “The fact is I was elected to do exactly what I’m doing now and I think the Conservative members are going to keep their faith in me.”
Leaving the ECHR
In a later interview with GB News, Badenoch said that MPs who did not agree with leaving the ECHR would not be able to stand as a Conservative candidate.
While she acknowledged that party members can have differing views, she said: “If you want to be a Member of Parliament as a Conservative, then you need to understand that leaving the ECHR is a manifesto commitment.”
Her comments follow her pledge to leave the ECHR as part of a plan to deport 750,000 people over the course of the next Parliament, more than the 600,000 targeted by Reform’s “mass deportation” plan announced during the summer.
However, when pressed by Kuenssberg over where deportees would go if unable to return to their own countries, she described it as an “irrelevant question”.
She added: “People need to go back to their own countries.”
Following the interviews, Labour accused Badenoch of being unable to answer questions “about the policies she supposedly spent months thinking about”.