Kemi Badenoch hits back at Labour as she launches Tory leadership bid

Kemi Badenoch has warned the former Tory government's mistake was that it “talked right but governed left”.

The Tory leadership hopeful, one of six candidates gunning to replace Rishi Sunak, said the party was “sounding like Conservatives but acting like Labour”.

Speaking at the launch of her “Renewal 2030” campaign in London yesterday (MON), the Shadow Communities Secretary said: “We need to reboot, reset, and rewire.

“We talked right but governed left. Sounding like Conservatives but acting like Labour”.

Addressing a packed room at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, she added: “A government that tries to do everything will likely end up achieving nothing. This was one of our mistakes.”

She said that there were a number of cases where the Tories had advocated “big state rather than limited state”, citing the handling of the net zero agenda.

Mrs Badenoch suggested that Labour is only in Government because people no longer believed in the Conservatives.

Sir Keir Starmer’s party won a landslide victory at the July 4 election when the number of Tory MPs in the Commons was reduced to 121.

MPs returned to Westminster today after the summer break, with the Tory leadership candidates seeking support ahead of the first round of voting in the race on Wednesday.

At least one of the six contenders - which includes James Cleverly, Dame Priti Patel, Mel Stride, Tom Tugendhat and Robert Jenrick - will be knocked out of the race after the ballot.

Mrs Badenoch accused her opponents who are committed to leaving the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) of offering "easy answers" on illegal migration.

Asked how she would deal with small boats bringing migrants to the UK, she said she would not make promises she could not keep and that there was no silver bullet for tackling illegal migration, describing leaving the ECHR as an "easy" answer to a difficult problem.

“People throwing out numbers and saying we’ll leave the ECHR are giving easy answers. That’s how we got in this mess in the first place,” she added.

The remarks are likely to be interpreted as a thinly-veiled swipe at Mr Jenrick, who along with Mrs Badenoch is seen as a frontrunner in the race to replace Mr Sunak.

Mr Jenrick has said he would withdraw the UK from the convention as a way of stopping small boats crossing the Channel to reach the UK.

Both Mr Jenrick and Mr Tugendhat have also advocated imposing an annual cap of less than 100,000.

Asked for her views on a potential immigration cap, Mrs Badenoch said: “We had a cap of tens of thousands when David Cameron came in. We need to ask ourselves why didn’t that work rather than just saying we will make another promise.

“Something went wrong there so it is not just about throwing out numbers and throwing out targets. Something is wrong with the system.

“So I am talking about the system. People who are throwing out numbers and saying ‘oh, well we will leave the ECHR’ and so on are giving you easy answers.

“That is how we got in this mess in the first place. I am not going to do that.”

The former Business Secretary also said she was far more concerned by the election of five “sectarian Islamist” independent MPs rather than the same number of Reform MPs

In a combative address, she kept her comments in relation to Reform UK to a minimum.

Instead she said: “I am far more worried about the five independent MPs elected on sectarian Islamist politics, alien ideas that have no place here”.

The independent MPs who unseated Labour at July’s election include: Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain, Iqbal Mohamed and Ayoub Khan.

Former engineer Mrs Badenoch also used her campaign launch to take aim at the Labour Government.

She said: “The British people are yearning for something better, and this Labour Government is not it.”

The frontbench Tory labelled the Government as “clueless, irresponsible and dishonest” over its tax plans.

Labour are “trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public” about the state of the UK’s finances, Mrs Badenoch warned.

She said: “They are already making worse mistakes than we did.”

Both Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir have warned of more difficult decisions to come to fill a £22 billion black hole in the public’s finances.

The Prime Minister labelled the forthcoming autumn budget on October 30 as "painful".

But Sir Keir has said he is “not going to take lectures” from the previous government following Mrs Badenoch’s comments about the Labour Party.

Asked to respond to her description of the Labour government as dishonest and misleading the public over the state of public finances, the Prime Minister said: “I say I’m not going to take lectures from anyone from the previous government who left the worst possible inheritance.

“The country is in a real state, the economy has been badly damaged, nobody really argues in relation to that.

“There’s a £22 billion black hole unaccounted for, not on the books, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) didn’t know about it.

“So, I think that what the Conservatives could do was to apologise for the mess that they made.

“What we’re doing is cleaning it up. We’re going to strip it out, make sure that we rebuild the foundation so we can bring about the change that we were elected to bring about in this country.”

The new Tory leader will not be in place to respond to the Budget because the winner will only be announced on November 2.

The field of six candidates will be whittled down to four by the time of the Conservative conference in Birmingham at the end of this month.

MPs will then carry out further rounds of voting to select two final candidates for the Conservative members to choose between.