Starmer will reverse Brexit, warns Badenoch
Labour will reverse Brexit if it wins the general election, Kemi Badenoch has warned.
In an interview with The Telegraph, the Business Secretary says Brexit is a “10 to 20-year project” and that any benefits will disappear if Sir Keir Starmer becomes prime minister.
She also understands why some on the Right are “frustrated” with the Conservatives but has urged them not to defect to Reform UK, saying it would be a wasted vote. Instead, she tells them to “look at the bad things we have stopped that will come in under Labour”.
Reports emerged on Friday that Labour had drawn up plans to raise capital gains tax and inheritance tax, bringing in £10 billion a year.
Sunday is the eighth anniversary of the vote to leave the European Union. Sir Keir has called for closer cooperation with Brussels on education, defence and security. He has also said he does not want to diverge from EU standards on workers’ rights and food standards.
Addressing Brexit, Mrs Badenoch says: “One of my biggest challenges is the criticism on the Right that we haven’t done things that we actually have done… they are trying to tell people that it has not been a success.
“This is a 10 or 20-year project. We’ve just started. It’s like building a house and someone comes in and says oh, it’s not done yet, he’s failed. Or you’re cooking something and, five minutes later, it’s not cooked yet, it’s not working, let’s stop.
“Making sure everyone is focused on getting those benefits is absolutely critical. I think that’s one area where I’ve tried to do as much as possible, but we need more of that strategy.
“That’s something that’s going to disappear if Labour come in; they will take us backwards. They will take us back to square one. They’re just going to copy what the EU does.”
The minister says that not only would Labour seek to unravel the Brexit vote, it would bring in a slew of disruptive regulations on business. She accuses Sir Keir of seeking to bring in new equality laws that would require pay cuts for men to ensure firms close the gender pay gap.
She is also “very worried” that Labour would scrap guidance telling teachers they should not help children socially transition, which is when a pupil changes the gender of their preferred pronouns.
Mrs Badenoch declined to answer questions about whether she could be a future Conservative leader. A poll for the Telegraph this week found she would be the only Tory “big beast” left with a seat after the election, with the party forecast to suffer a historic defeat.
She tells Tory MPs to spend the next two weeks reminding voters that, without them, Brexit would not have been delivered and we would still be “going round and round in circles arguing about the referendum”. She points out that the Tories are seeking trade deals with countries such as India and Singapore, whereas Labour “cannot see past the Channel”.
Mrs Badenoch speaks warmly about Reform UK voters, but urges them to back the Tories instead. “It’s very sad for me, seeing the Reform vote go up, but I understand where a lot of people who are looking that way are coming from,” she says.
“I have friends who are voting Reform, thankfully not [in my constituency]… But what I am trying to emphasise is that we get your frustration. I hate the way people talk about Reform voters, I think it is very disrespectful. We should not talk about people who are on the centre-Right that way.”
She adds that a vote for Mr Farage’s party is a wasted vote. “Remember that the Reform vote is not concentrated enough to get seats. [It] may get loads of votes, but they wouldn’t get seats because they need votes in particular areas. And if I’m sitting there having lost 100 Conservatives, one extra Reform MP is not going to help. It’s not going to help me deliver a conservative agenda. It’s not going to help the Tory party deliver a conservative agenda. It’s not going to help us hold Labour to account. We need to have Conservative MPs with conservative values.”
On Friday, another poll showed Reform with more support than the Tories. The survey, by Whitestone Insight of 2,029 adults in Britain on Wednesday and Thursday, put Reform on 20 per cent and the Tories on 19 per cent. Labour is on 39 per cent, according to the poll.
Mrs Badenoch would not answer questions on whether she would stand as Tory leader should Rishi Sunak resign in the wake of a Conservative defeat. She said that because the Conservative intake during Boris Johnson’s 2019 success was so broad, some traditional voters believed the party was not doing enough on issues like “free markets or defence”. Despite this, she said: “I don’t think that we have lost touch with core values at all.”
‘Labour in power? My constituents are terrified’
By Daniel Martin, Deputy Political Editor
If there is one question Kemi Badenoch is keen to shut down immediately, it is about the Conservative leadership.
Asked whether she would put her name forward if the Tories’ election campaign continues to falter, she declines to answer.
“I’m not talking about if it goes wrong,” she says quickly. “I know everybody likes asking this question.
“We spend a lot of time talking about who wants to be the leader and who’s had drinks in their office. But actually when those stories are reported, people in my constituency don’t understand it.
“They see it as everybody being in politics just for their personal ambitions. And that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing it for them. And I want people to understand that.”
And yet the rumours will not stop swirling. They reached fever pitch earlier this week when The Telegraph’s MRP poll showed that the Conservatives were due to be virtually wiped out, taking only 53 seats.
Not only did Rishi Sunak lose his seat under this projection, but almost all of the front runners in the race to be Tory leader – Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick, Penny Mordaunt – were expected to lose out, too.
Only one big beast remained - Mrs Badenoch, the Business Secretary and equalities minister, potentially leaving the way clear for her to become leader of the opposition at the age of 44.
Before the last election, she was MP for the large rural seat of Saffron Walden, which has now been redrawn and called North West Essex.
It is a stunningly beautiful part of England – especially so on a glorious day like today, with the sun glinting off the windows of the chocolate-box cottages and country churches.
Speaking in the kitchen of her home near Saffron Walden, fresh from a meeting with local farmers, Mrs Badenoch said only the Tories really understood rural constituencies.
“Many of the things that the farmers were talking about and worried about were things that would come in with the Labour government, more regulation, or lack of understanding about business,” she says.
“People seem to have forgotten that it’s getting harder and harder to make money as a farmer. We are the party that wants to see farming thrive.”
She says she was brought into Tory politics through her belief in personal responsibility, as opposed to the Labour side which was all about rights.
“We are moving into an arena where people want governments to sort everything out no matter how small,” she says. “And that would be accelerated under a Labour government.”
In what way? She points to the opposition party’s plans to bring in a race equality act which would force firms to make sure people of different ethnicities are paid the same.
“We already have an equality act,” she says. “We already have laws. What they are bringing in is more and more inspection, more and more quotas. I would be very worried.
“They’re bringing in things like employment regulations that are well above and beyond what is required for people to have good rights in the workplace.”
She said that many of the requests from trade unions for changes to employment law that she had batted off during her time in the business department would be implemented under Labour, adding: “It will be on speed, effectively.”
Workers’ rights
Warming to her theme, she goes on: “There are many reasons why people will have different pay: different levels of education, different experience, different lifestyle choices. The gender pay gap is virtually impossible to close.
“Rachel Reeves is saying that she’s going to close it. To do that, you’re going to have to pay men less. That’s the only way that you can do that.”
Labour will also bring in new workers’ rights on day one, “where somebody doesn’t turn up for work, and you can’t sack them”.
“It’s going to be things like four-day weeks,” she warns. “You know, we used to have three-day weeks in the 70s. People don’t see what we’ve been stopping.”
Mrs Badenoch said she was also “very very worried” about how Labour would act in government when it comes to sex and gender.
“I’m worried that they will undo the work we have done on gender-questioning guidance for children,” she says, referring to the guidelines that tell teachers they should not allow children who want to change gender to socially transition in school by allowing them to use their preferred pronouns and the facilities for the gender they identify as.
“I do think that if Labour come in, it’s going to disappear.”
She also pointed to Labour plans to charge VAT on private school fees, saying parents in her constituency were “absolutely terrified” and “It’s not fair, and it’s not right”.
Despite this, however, Labour still has a massive lead in the polls, with surveys suggesting they could come in with a majority in excess of 200.
“You’re right, this is a tough election after 14 years. There’s no safe seats,” she says.
“What has come up on the doorstep is that Conservative voters are fed up with infighting or what they see as infighting.
“What I try to explain to them is that when we do have these disagreements, it is about what is right for the voter.
“When Labour has disagreements it is about Gaza, or whether Jeremy Corbyn should be in the party, or whether Diane Abbott is really anti-Semitic.
“We’re not going to pretend that things have been absolutely perfect. But when we’re fighting, we’re fighting for your readers, but when Labour is fighting, they’re fighting on trivia nonsense.
“And I would ask your readers to look at what we’re fighting about. It’s how do we deal with immigration, what should we do about small boats, is the Rwanda policy the right policy? These are things that reflect what the country is debating.”
She rejects the notion that the Tories have lost sight of some of their core values.
“I do think that the Conservative coalition is broader than it has ever been before, and that means that there’s a lot more internal tension,” she says.
“So Conservative voters often think that we’ve forgotten about free markets or defence. The traditional Conservative voter, I would say, might think that we’re not doing enough on that, but we have new Conservative voters who want to do other things as well.
“And that’s where much of the tension is coming from. So I don’t think that we have lost touch with core values at all. I think we’re very much in touch with them. But we are trying to create a policy platform that the whole country can get behind, not just the core base.”
Shutting down debate
A Labour majority is more than possible, she says – and if it happens she warns they will shut down debate.
“We’ve got to be focused on everyone winning their seats and delivering a Conservative majority,” she says. “But look at the language that Labour MPs use. We had a great candidate in London, Susan Hall, and the day before the election Wes Streeting was calling her a white supremacist.
“That’s what they do in opposition. Imagine what they will do if they have the levers of power. They won’t just be talking on Twitter, they will be using that power to shut down alternative debate.
“If you get a Labour super-majority, what you will see is Labour using that power to shut down people they disagree with.”
With less than two weeks to go until election day, Mrs Badenoch said candidates and activists had to knock on doors to talk about “the good stuff because everybody wants to talk about what’s gone wrong”.
“But there’s so much that has gone right,” she insists, from supporting firms during Covid, the amount of money ploughed into the NHS, and “Rishi Sunak managing the economy very well”.
“People need to remember that without the Conservative Party, we would still be going round and round in circles arguing about the referendum five years later.
“And look how strong we have been supporting Ukraine, making sure we are providing strength and moral courage to the rest of Europe on defence. I don’t think Labour will do that.”
She pointed to Sir Keir Starmer’s performance on Thursday night’s Question Time, when he claimed Mr Corbyn would have been a better leader than Boris Johnson, despite having previously attacked him; and changing his view on whether only women can have a cervix.
“This is the stuff that demonstrates somebody who is not firmly rooted in his principles,” she warns. “He is somebody who is blowing where the wind goes and thinks that everything bad is down to the Tories.
“He’s got no solutions of his own.”
