Badenoch says she will take an opposite approach to Labor on the economy

Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch said her approach to the economy would be “completely the opposite” of Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on her first day in work, Badenoch gave the first glimpse of her policy priorities, including reversing the VAT increase on private schools.

She said the Conservatives had “done a lot of things wrong” ahead of their historic election defeat, including on immigration and taxes, but refused to provide a “post-mortem” of her predecessors, claiming the Partygate scandal was “exaggerated ” was.

With appointments to her shadow cabinet expected in the coming days, Badenoch said she wanted to show the party was united with a meritocratically selected front bench.

Asked whether she would reverse the Chancellor’s decision to increase National Insurance (NI) contributions, Badenoch said she is not the Chancellor and also has “very few” MPs.

“We will not be able to oppose anything when it comes to passing legislation,” she said, adding that she could only “make the argument that raising taxes in this way… will not grow our economy and that we will leave the economy.” we are all poorer.”

However, when Badenoch was asked directly whether she would reverse the VAT increase on private schools, she was resolute: “Yes, yes, I would… because it is a tax on ambition, but it will not make any money” and was therefore “against our principles”.

Badenoch also told Ms Kuenssberg that “it is not government that creates growth, it is business that creates growth”, adding that this is “completely the opposite of what Rachel Reeves does”.

Badenoch, the first black leader of a Westminster party, said she disagrees not only with Reeves’ economic policies but also with the way she has spoken about becoming Britain’s first female chancellor in 800 years.

She said: ‘I think it will be best if we reach a point where the color of your skin is no more remarkable than the color of your eyes or the color of your hair.

“I think it’s amazing that Rachel Reeves keeps talking about being the first female chancellor, which I think is a very, very low glass ceiling within the Labor Party that she may have broken.

“Nothing is more important than what other women in this country have accomplished.”

She was also critical of her predecessor Rishi Sunak’s leadership, saying he had lost confidence with voters because “promises on immigration and taxes were not kept and that is something we need to change”.

Badenoch resigned from Boris Johnson’s cabinet over his handling of the Chris Pincher affair, which she said led to the public thinking “we were no longer speaking on their behalf or looking out for them, we were doing it for ourselves” .

But regarding the Partygate scandal, she said Johnson had fallen into “a trap.”

“A lot of the things that happened around Partygate weren’t the reason why I resigned – I thought it was overblown,” she said.

“We should not have drawn up fixed penalty notices… then we were not following our principles.”

When Badenoch was asked to apologize for the economic turmoil under Liz Truss, she said she wanted to “draw a line” under the mistakes of previous leaders and refused to undergo a “post-mortem” of every Conservative leader “over the last fourteen years ‘. .

Instead, Badenoch said her focus was on rebuilding trust and creating a perception of unity within the party, although she said that was “very difficult”, especially when “not everyone wants to serve”.

She added: “The public didn’t trust us for a whole host of reasons – not keeping promises, but also because it looked divided.”

Commenting on the loss of Conservative voters to Nigel Farage-led reform Britain at the last election, Badenoch denied she would simply offer voters “more of the same”.

She said: ‘Nigel Farage and the success of the reform are, in my view, a symptom of the Conservative party not being clear enough and consistent enough about values ​​and how we used those Conservative values ​​to reach the British people.

“If we get this right, I think people will come to see that the reform is nothing but a spoiler for the Conservatives and will only create more and more Labor government.”