Politics ‘not show business’, Badenoch warns at Tory local elections launch
The Conservatives are facing an “extremely difficult” challenge in May’s local elections, Kemi Badenoch warned as she launched the party’s campaign to win town halls.
The Tory leader was also defiant about the threat her party faces from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, urging voters to remember politics is not “show business” and that “you will have to live with what you vote for”.
Voters across a number of county councils and unitary authorities in England will go to the polls on May 1, the first major electoral test since last July’s election.
The Conservatives suffered a crushing general election defeat last summer, and have since been overtaken in opinion polls by Reform UK.
And Badenoch pledged “lower taxes and better services” as she launched the Tories’ local campaign in Buckinghamshire on Thursday.
“We are the only credible choice: Lib Dems will wreck your public services, Reform has no experience running anything, Greens will run councils into the ground and Labour will spend, tax and waste your money, just like they always do,” she told the audience of Tory activists.
‘Vaccine bounce’
In an attempt to manage expectations about the party’s success in the coming election, Badenoch said the Conservatives had been “riding high during the vaccine bounce” the last time the councils went to the polls in 2021.
She added that this year would be different after the general election result, telling the audience: “If you map that general election result of 2024 onto this coming May, then we don’t win the councils like we won in 2021, we lose almost every single one.
“I think we’re going to do a bit better than that, but we know that these elections will be extremely difficult.”
And politics is “not showbusiness”, the Conservative leader said in a veiled criticism of Farage, who appeared on reality TV show “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here” in 2023.
She added: “This is not a game. This is about people’s lives. This is not for us. It is for all those people out there who need credible politicians. That is what we’re offering.”
The Conservative leader also sought to suggest there would be consequences of voting for Reform UK over the Tories at the local elections.
Badenoch warning
She said: “This is not a national referendum. People sometimes will vote for protest parties, but what I’m saying now is that you will have to live with what you vote for.”
Earlier this week, Badenoch scrapped the Conservatives’ commitment to reach net zero by 2050, describing it as “impossible” as she began an overhaul of the party’s policy offer.
The move was compared to the approach followed by Reform UK, which has sought to win over voters sceptical of the environmental policy.
The Tory launch comes just days after Farage revealed 29 councillors had defected to Reform UK – including Conservatives, Lib Dems and independents – as he kicked off his party’s local campaign.
The Reform UK leader hopes to prove “that the polls aren’t virtual”, and demonstrate his party does have a foothold with the electorate during the May elections.
But the Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper described the Tory local election launch as a “desperate attempt to shore up the crumbling Conservative vote”.