New Tory leader Kemi Badenoch says business will lead party's revival

Kemi Badenoch vowed to tell ‘hard truths’ to her party and the country last night and shake-up Britain’s economy so it would be ‘fit for the future’.

In her first day after being crowned Tory leader, Mrs Badenoch said her approach to the economy would be ‘completely the opposite’ of Rachel Reeves.

On Monday the new Opposition Leader will appoint her shadow cabinet team after saying yesterday she wanted to show that ‘unity is back in the Conservative Party’.

Last night she appointed Rebecca Harris as the party’s chief whip with a slew of other appointments expected to be made today.

In her first interview since winning the vote of Tory members, she said yesterday she was ‘very optimistic’ about what the party can pitch to voters.

On the economy, she said she was going to be thinking about it ‘in a different way’ which amounted to ‘completely the opposite of what Rachel Reeves is doing.’

She said that one of her principles will be that ‘it is not the government that creates growth, it’s the business that creates growth.’

‘It’s business that creates those real jobs,’ she added, saying the party will look at ‘how we make life easier for business so that they can help grow the economy, so that people can invest, so that people can take those risks that help us to be more productive.

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‘If we start from the assumption that we can just tax and borrow our way through, we will keep getting poorer and that is what has been happening and we were a part of that.’

Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, she said among the ‘hard truths’ she would tell the party and the country is that ‘we are getting poorer, we are getting older.’

She added: ‘We are being out-competed by many other competitor countries and we need to look at how we can re-organise our economy to be fit for the future, not just trying to do what we always used to, and I think there is an exciting challenge there. I’m very optimistic about what we can do.

‘But simply, just saying things and making promises to the whole country, without knowing how you’re going to deliver them, as we did on Brexit, as we did on Net Zero, I don’t think is building trust.’

Mrs Badenoch became the first black female leader of a UK political party on Saturday after earning just over 56 per cent of the 95,000 votes from party members.

But she downplayed the importance of the milestone yesterday, instead suggesting the ‘best thing will be when we get to a point where the colour of your skin is no more remarkable than the colour of your eyes, or the colour of your hair.’

She added it was great to live in a ‘multiracial country’ but added ‘we have to work very hard to make sure that it doesn’t become something divisive where people see themselves as being part of groups, rather than all being British.’

Her combative style raised eyebrows as she went on to suggest that Ms Reeves’ only smashed a ‘very low glass ceiling’ when she became Britain’s first female Chancellor.

She said: ‘I find it astonishing that Rachel Reeves keeps talking about how she’s the first female chancellor, which in my view is a very low glass ceiling within the Labour Party, which she may have smashed. Nowhere near as significant as what other women in this country have achieved.’

Mrs Badenoch sparked further controversy by claiming the outrage over parties held in Downing Street during the Covid lockdown was ‘overblown.’

She said she would get back to ‘telling the truth’ by ‘talking about the genuine trade-offs that we need to have as a country in order to move forward’.

But she declined to be drawn into a post-mortem about the party’s last few years in office - she served as a minister for each of the four last Tory Prime Ministers - but admitted the tax burden under the last government was too high.

She also committed to reversing Labour’s decision to impose VAT on private schools if she came to power, describing it as a ‘tax on aspiration’ that would not raise money.

Since being elected in 2017, she has become a darling of the Tory right, including a failed leadership bid in 2022.

Mrs Badenoch served as Business Secretary - and held the Women and Equalities brief - under Rishi Sunak. Prior to that, she held several junior ministerial roles.

She said she was embracing the ‘exciting challenge’ opposing Sir Keir Starmer’s faltering government, and said she would hold the Government’s feet to the fire despite Labour’s landslide majority.

She said:‘We have very few MPs. We’re not going to be able to oppose anything in terms of getting legislation through.

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‘What we can do is make the argument about why we think what they’re doing is wrong, and I am making that argument that raising taxes in this way, whether it’s employer national insurance or elsewhere is not going to grow our economy and will leave all of us poorer.’

Mrs Badenoch, who quit as a junior minister in Boris Johnson’s government, criticised Covid restrictions as she suggested Partygate was ‘overblown’.

‘A lot of the stuff that happened around Partygate was not why I resigned. I thought that it was overblown. We should not have created fixed penalty notices, for example. That was us not going with our principles.

‘We should not have criminalised everyday activities the way that we did. People going out for walks, all of them having fixed penalty notices, that was what ended up creating a trap for Boris Johnson.’

But Labour Party chair Ellie Reeves said: ‘Listening to Kemi Badenoch dismiss Partygate as ‘overblown’ will add insult to injury for families across Britain who followed the rules, missing loved ones’ deaths and family funerals, whilst her colleagues partied in Downing Street.’

Mrs Badenoch is expected to appoint her full Shadow Cabinet tomorrow, ahead of a meeting of the team on Tuesday.

Those tipped for top jobs include Claire Coutinho, Andrew Griffith, Alex Burghart and Julia Lopez.

The party leader is hoping to show the public a united front in opposition after years of infighting in government.

Several of Rishi Sunak’s team had already declared they would be taking a step back from frontline politics, including his shadow chancellor Jeremy Hunt.

James Cleverly - who just lost out to Ms Badenoch and Robert Jenrick with MPs in the leadership contest - claimed he was ‘liberated’ by his campaign and did not want to be ‘boxed back into a narrow band’.

Former Deputy PM Oliver Dowden announced his own departure from the Tory senior team in his final clash with counterpart Angela Rayner last month.

Mrs Badenoch said reforming the Conservative Party would help dismiss the growing electoral threat of Nigel Farage.

‘Nigel Farage and the success of Reform are a symptom of the Conservative party in my view, not being clear enough and consistent enough about values and about how we were using those Conservative values to deliver to the British people,’ she said.

‘If we get this right, then I think people will start to see that Reform is nothing but a spoiler for the Conservatives and just creates more and more Labour government.’

The new Conservative leader ...in her own words on key issues

On Labour's school VAT raid:

'It’s a tax on aspiration, but it won’t raise any money.... Taxing education is wrong.'

On Partygate:

'A lot of the stuff that happened around Partygate was not why I resigned. I thought that it was over-blown. 

'We should not have created fixed penalty notices, for example. That was us not going with our principles. 

'We should not have criminalised every day activities the way that we did.'

On the economy:

'It is not the Government that creates growth, it’s business that creates growth. It’s business that creates those real jobs.'

On race:

'I think that the best thing will be when we get to a point where the colour of your skin is no more remarkable than the colour of your eyes, or the colour of your hair. 

'We live in a multiracial country and that is great, but we have to work very hard to make sure that it doesn’t become something divisive where people see themselves as being part of groups, rather than all being British.'

On Chancellor Rachel Reeves:

'I find it astonishing that Rachel Reeves keeps talking about how she’s the first female Chancellor, which in my view is a very low glass ceiling within the Labour Party, which she may have smashed. 

'Nowhere near as significant as what other women in this country have achieved.'