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'It's not 2016 any more' - Badenoch criticises group pushing moderate Conservatism in speech denouncing 'psychodrama'
Kemi Badenoch is going to give a speech today denouncing the “PSYCHODRAMA” of Labour and Reform UK. The all-caps emphasis is from the preview text sent out by CCHQ overnight. It sounds like a personal Badenoch touch – as well as being reminiscent of the tone Donald Trump adopts in his social media output.
Here is the key extract.
At a time when Nato has been under threat.
At a time when Conservatives were simultaneously working day and night in parliament to find ways to stop the government surrendering British territory in the Chagos Islands, and piling the pressure on Labour to save Britain’s pubs…
What were the other parties doing?
PSYCHODRAMA!
The Labour party … scheming to get a new leadership contender to Westminster to challenge Keir Starmer.
Meanwhile, Reform UK dressed up a defection rally as a veterans event. Shameful.
Neither are serious and the public are thoroughly fed up with this style of politics.
So who is going to fix this country’s problems?
Is it the people who are knuckling down day in, day out, holding the government to account for its many failings …
Or is it the party who only call a press conference when they are announcing another defection?
Critics will say that the Tories have not been holding back themselves when it comes to supplying the Westminster demand for psychodrama. After Suella Braverman defected to Reform UK, Tory HQ even issued a statement (which they later retracted) speculating about the psychological health of their former MP. The party said it had been sent out in error, but Braverman said it had echoes of something Badenoch herself had said about her in the past.
And, while claiming that the Conservatives are the only party “serious” about policy, Badenoch is also going to use her speech for a bit of internal faction-fighting – blasting Prosper, the new group launched by Ruth Davidson and Andy Street arguing for “moderate” Conservatism.
In the extract sent out overnight, Badenoch does not name Prosper. But she clearly refers to them, saying:
There’s another group of people who seem to think that if we just pretend that nothing bad is happening, everything is going to be OK …
… as long as we say nice things and don’t mention immigration.
This is my message to them.
We’re about the future, not the past.
We’re not trying to recreate 2006 and it’s not 2016 any more.
We aren’t refighting those battles. It’s 2026 and the world has changed.
This is about the future. I am building a Conservative party for the next decade and the next generation.
Good morning. Keir Starmer will be landing in China shortly, and he has been speaking to journalists on his flight over. As usual when a PM travels abroad, while they may want to focus on foreign issues, domestic politics never gets forgotten.
As Pippa Crerar reports, Starmer was asked about the Gorton and Denton byelection, where yesterday Reform UK named a GB News presenter and hard-right commentator, Matt Goodwin, as its candidate. Starmer claimed only Labour could beat Reform in the constituency. He said:
There’s only one party to stop Reform and that’s the Labour party. We can already see what the bybelection is going to be about, which is Labour values which are about delivering on the cost of living with a strong record in that constituency of what we’ve already done versus Reform.
You can see from their candidate what politics they’re going to bring to that constituency: the politics of division, of toxic division, of tearing people apart. That’s not what that constituency is about, it’s not what Manchester is about, so this is a straight fight between Labour and Reform.
The Greens won’t agree with that. And the bookmakers don’t either.
As Pippa reports, Starmer also said that he would “raise the issues that need to be raised” on human rights with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, when they meet tomorrow.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Around 9.30am (UK time): Keir Starmer arrives in Beijing. He will be giving a speech to a business delegation (around 11.45am UK time).
10am: Kemi Badenoch gives a speech criticising the the ‘psychodrama’ of both Reform UK and Labour.
Noon: David Lammy, the deputy PM, takes PMQs on behalf of Starmer.
1.30pm: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, gives a speech in Edinburgh on international affairs.
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