Ahead of the Conservative Party Conference 2025 Kemi Badenoch, Leader of the Conservative Party sat down for an interview with Giles Dilnot, Editor of Conservative Home. You can listen here:
He began by asking:
GD: “How much are you conscious of the level of expectation on the party, and on you, to deliver at this year’s Conference?”
KB: “So the expectation of what this conference would be was actually seeded in my mind even before I became leader.
And it was something that William Hague said to me.. he said, in 1997 everybody was excited because we had this leadership contest. And in 1998 everybody at Conference was depressed because they realised they were in opposition, and Labour was doing very well.
So I’ve been thinking, how can I avoid that? How can I make sure that this conference is exciting?
And there is a lot to for us to be cautiously excited and optimistic about because what I’m doing is reshaping and renewing the party so that we go back to first principles, but also start showing where it is we’re going ? Which is the question that a lot of people were asking in May at the last election, and last year at the General Election.
That’s the problem that I want to fix, of knocking on doors in July 2024… and I think I’ve told you this story before Giles, maybe I haven’t…
There was a man who said: ‘when someone turned up with the blue rosette, you knew what they were selling, and maybe you liked what they were selling [or] you didn’t like what they were selling, but you knew. Now I don’t know what your party is selling.’
This Conference is explaining what the party is selling.
We’re the party that is, the party of a stronger economy …and the reason why is because we’re also the party of business, small and large – we spent a lot of time looking like the party of big business and international corporations. That’s not who we are – Who are our people? Explaining, you know, it’s the farmers, it’s the people going out there, grafting, working.
We’ve got to get those people back and show them that we’re the ones who are on their side and Reform, you know, maybe saying lots of nice things, but actually they don’t know how to do any of those things they’re talking about.”
GD: “Is it time for patience, or do we need a tour of that ‘red meat restaurant’ ?”
KB: “So, everyone knows how much I love steak, so they don’t need to worry about red meat when it comes to me. I was giving the red meat when we were on a veggie diet!
So they can, they can, be sure that they’ll see more red meat.
But in terms of time, I think we need to recognise the difference between Keir Starmer looking like he’s in trouble, versus Labour looking like they’re in trouble. They’ve got 140 something majority. They could take out 120 which is our number, and they’d still be in government.
And I think that we mustn’t get carried away by, you know, the terrible headlines that they’re having, and they are terrible; how bad a job they’re doing, or how much people hate him on social media… I remember when we were in government, and we’re winning elections, even while Twitter, and according to Twitter, Jeremy Corbyn was going to become Prime Minister.
We have got to hold our nerve. We have got to stay the course.
There’s a plan which we set out, and that plan also factored in things like Labour not doing well, like Reform doing better. And how do we counter that?
And it’s all about us shaking off many of the things which we were spending our time on, which were not Conservative things, and just focusing on a few things that government should do well, rather than a lot of things that government was doing badly.
It’s on a sign that I have up there. [indicates sign on wall in LOTO office]
That’s my mantra.” (3:21 in audio)
GD: “Have you sped up the process at all?”
KB: “The process is fast. But look at what happens with all the policy that we’ve come out with. We came out with a deportation bill. Reform has copied it. We came out, you know, with the stopping the fast track to British citizenship, the changes to ILR, both Reform and Labour have copied it. A lot of the stuff I said on net zero? Reform have come out, and they pretend that those are their policies.
The difference is that they don’t do the homework. We have detailed thinking behind them. Our plans stay solid after we’ve announced them. Theirs fall apart the minute someone asks Nigel Farage a question… he starts changing and he starts changing his mind. That’s what he’ll do when he’s in government, changing every other day.
You want people who are going to be strong and solid. So we have to be mindful that what we announce today is based on the circumstances as we see them, as we think they’re going to be in four years’ time.
But we still have to be careful.
But there is a lot that we have come out with already on immigration in particular, which is where a lot of our people feel let down. That’s the thing that they’re most disillusioned by.” (4:37 in audio)
GD: “Do you still think, though, that in the end, it’s still ‘the economy, stupid?’”
KB: “It always is. Even the problems with immigration are related to the economy.
People started getting very frustrated when they saw lots of people turning up getting benefits which they were not entitled to, you know, getting treated in a way that they weren’t treated.
A lot of that is reflected in the ‘two tier Keir’ conversation.
The economy is the thing that’s going to make everybody’s lives better. You can’t fix your borders if you don’t have a strong economy. You can’t have a strong economy if you don’t fix your borders. We’ve got to work through those things in tandem.
So yes, the economy is the thing, but it will help fix every other thing. It’s all related.” (5:13 in audio)
GD: “Are we in danger of becoming irrelevant?”
KB: “No, and this is where I can cheer up a lot of a lot of your readers, they’re [Labour] saying that because that is what they want to happen. Labour knows that if it goes into an election with Reform as its main opponent, they have a better chance of winning because a lot of people don’t like the way Reform behave. They don’t like …they just don’t like what they’re about.
They’re not concerned about those things when it comes to us. That’s the truth.
Reform have said that they want to destroy the Conservative Party. That’s what Nigel Farage has said. They [Labour] are trying to talk this up because we are their biggest threat.
The fact is, we’re the ones who got rid of Angela Rayner. She’d still be there if not for the work the CCHQ did. Part of our strategy has been shaping our Opposition Research Unit so that we can actually do the job of opposition properly.
It wasn’t fit for purpose. When I came in, it was a ‘government CCHQ.
Angela Rayner is gone because of CCHQ. Peter Mandelson is gone because of my questioning …while I was doing that, Nigel Farage was in the US, telling everyone our country was North Korea.
And you know, we’ve just had a [former] Reform leader in Wales …being bribed by the Russians. That’s something that hasn’t even got that much salience. There’s an election, people are going to be looking at those sorts of things more quickly.
They enjoy Nigel Farage’s charisma, but he is still a one man band.
We are a strong team.
We’re the ones who got them [Labour] to reverse on the national grooming gangs inquiry, not just us, but we ran a very solid campaign under the radar, targeting their MPs in their seats. We did the same thing on winter fuel. We got nearly, I think, a million signatures, and we made sure that we targeted people who are in Labour MP seats, so that they know that their seats are in trouble if they don’t do the right thing.
That’s how we are making waves. Reform is not doing that.
They’re a one man band, and yes, they will do say a lot of stuff on TV, but there is more to campaigning than that.
They [ConservativeHome readers] should be cheered up.
And let’s not forget, we have out-raised all the other parties. In some quarters, raising more than all of them combined. Certainly the last one Labour and Reform combined… the people who have something to lose are not going to Reform. They’re not going to Labour. A lot of people are expressing their frustration by expressing support for Reform, but they’re not giving them money.
That’s important.” (7:32 in audio)
GD: “You have made a big play that the party is ‘under new leadership’. You just listed a whole load of things that have happened since you were leader, and yet I still see people judge the Conservative Party as it was on the first of July, 2024.
KB: “Yes”
GD “It’s as if nothing has happened…”
KB: “….because it takes time.
The last oppositions were 14 years, 18 years, …14 years, 13 years, 18 years. People who want overnight miracles are not going to get them easy-come easy-go. A steady build up is going to be harder to move than a quick up and down.
You know, we’re not going to [get] a quick up and down. We do not want to be a flash in the pan.
So people will remember the last few years, because it was several years things actually happened; in government we did things, but opposition says things.
We have to show that we’ve changed, and we have to do that every single day.
What we are attempting to do as a party has never been attempted before; going from a historic defeat back into government in four years, that’s going to require daily hand to hand combat.
We’re going to have lots of mud thrown at us. We’re going to have to cut through all sorts of thickets. There will be bad days. There will be good days. But we have to think long term, not just what happened today? Have we moved forward?
It’s not going to go up in a pure line.”
GD: “Do you have that time?”
KB: “We do have just enough time. We don’t have much time, but the plan is to use this time wisely.
What we need to do is make sure that every single day we’re pushing our message.
Conference is going to provide a lot more clarity, because there are many things that will be reliant on what we say at Conference and how that goes forward to local elections.
But what I want your readers to know is that every day I’m thinking about all of those Councillors out there. How am I going to help them win their seats? How am I going to help the MSPs in Scotland? How am I going to help the MSs in Wales?
How do we make sure that we are coherent at a time when the country is no longer that coherent.. the country is fragmented. That’s what’s shaking up a lot of the politics. Like people…you know, I saw it even during just post Brexit, people stopped talking to each other over policy issues, and we need a party that’s going to bring people together, not parties that are going to capitalise on those divisions.
Only the Conservative Party can bring people together.” (9:59 in audio)
GD: “You’ve seen the numbers. You’ve seen the polls. Tell me you are worried about how they look at the moment?
KB: “This is… so this is where speaking to previous opposition leaders has been helpful.
That is not how you focus your mind.
If you are looking at what’s happening in the polls on a day to day basis, you will go crazy. And you know, I was told Mrs. Thatcher didn’t spend her time on them. She was polling over …there were many times that she was polling quite badly.
There was, do you remember the SDP Liberal Alliance? Fifty! they were polling 50 per cent! Reform hasn’t got anywhere near that. ‘Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government’ … And what all the previous leaders of opposition have told me is that you’re going to have bad days.
This is the toughest job in politics for a reason, people will be trying to take you out, you know, whether it’s, you know, Labour or Reform or just people who see it as sport, because you don’t have the power of government, and it is the tenacity that you show that will determine whether or not you stay in the job.
And that’s what I’ve got to be focused on.
So that’s why every single day I’m out there on the media, giving interviews, explaining what we’re going to do to get Conservatives back on track.”
GD: “I’ll give you one group that you didn’t mention.. your own MPs. They look at polls, you know they do. They worry.”
KB: “Yes, they do, and I know that they worry.
So I’m not going to say that I don’t worry about things going wrong, but worrying doesn’t solve things. Preparing for them is what solves things.
And you know, my message to everyone is we’ve got to hold our nerve.
If we keep… if we flap every time something happens, we’re not going to last the course. And the public are also looking at us right now – one of the things that I’ve wanted to do is show that we are a party that opposes, [is] the opposition, not fights amongst ourselves.
This has been… this is not an easy thing to do.
You look at Nigel Farage. He came in with four MPs. He’s lost two of them. How is he going to manage with the 400 MPs that he’s claiming he’s going to get? It’s going to be complete chaos.
And that means me showing leadership that people want to follow, not just saying this is my way or the highway. Persuading people… getting them to agree to do difficult things.
That’s something we didn’t do before. We didn’t try and do difficult things. We just tried to make everybody happy, and we ended up doing nothing [or rather] we tried to not do anything that would upset anyone. We ended up doing nothing.
That’s not my way.
But I don’t just rush into things and lead by diktat we need to explain not just what we’re doing, but why we’re doing that, and we are doing a lot.
So when you say, ‘do we have time?’ the point is: that we are using that time.
We’re rebuilding CCHQ, we’re raising money, we’re shaping up the opposition research unit so that they can actually highlight the problems with our opponents – of all parties, quite frankly, and we’re coming out with the policies.
So people saying, ‘you don’t have any policies’… Of course, we do. We have a policy of, you know stopping net zero. It’s impoverishing our country, it’s bankrupting us. We have a policy of stopping high migration. We made mistakes there. Lots of people took their eye off the ball. We are now on it fully. There’s a lot that we need to do, but every day we’re spending time doing it.
But it all needs a plan.”
GD: “Does it frustrate you when people say: ‘Well, I’ve not heard anything, I haven’t seen anything?’”
KB: “Do you know what I actually had?
There was a dinner where someone literally said that to me, and I was on the front page of the of the newspaper. I was on the front page of The Daily Mail in big block, capital letters. and I said, “Well, look at this. This is just on your table.”
She said, “Well, I haven’t read that yet.”
And so it’s, it’s, I find it, I find it in there. That was a very, very amusing situation.
But cut-through requires endless repetition, and that requires time. So, you know, I gave an interview with The Sunday Times where I talked about that trade off between, you know, expectations and delivery.
So many [Conservative] people are rightly, very upset, frustrated, to be where they are. They want it to go away. They want the pain of bad polls to go away. They want the bad policies we had in government to go away, for people to forget.
That’s not how we’re going to win back the trust of the public. It’s not by coming out with a great announcement and telling everyone, look at this, it’s going to be fine.
We have to win back trust. And winning back trust is not a quick thing – you’ve got to show consistency, show that you’ve changed, again and again and again and again and again, and that’s when they come back.
They won’t just come back because you’ve rushed out wearing a new outfit. They will come back when they see that you have genuinely changed.” (14:41 in audio)
GD: “You have set out that we are spending beyond our means. That’s a really hard message to sell to people. How do we do it?”
KB: “By showing them that if we start to live within our means, we will all get wealthier.
We will all get richer. The cost of living will improve.
Right now, the rider is getting heavier than the horse. There are people who are out of work, who should be in work – and this is a fair country, British people understand fairness. Many people are very angry, because they can see that there are some people who are living off others when they can work.
And it doesn’t matter whether it is the neighbour who is getting free social housing, spending all their money on drinking booze when pretending to be disabled when they’re not, and they’re taking money from genuine disabled people.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s someone claiming asylum when they’re really an economic migrant, taking a place for a genuine asylum seeker. But also, they’re coming here and committing crimes.
They [the British people] can see they’re being taken for a ride.
We are the party of fairness, and we’ve got to show that in our policies, and that means living within our needs.
Labour claims to be a party of fairness, but they’re not. What they are is a party of harming those who aren’t ‘their people’ and then blaming them for every, every, problem and giving what they take to ‘their people’. That’s what Labour did.
They came into office and they splashed out on trade union inflation busting pay rises. They tax business they tax farmers, VAT on school fees. They went after people who they thought ‘these are not ourr people, we don’t care about them’.
But without looking at how all this stuff fits in together, Rachel Reeves has dug herself a big hole, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to get out of it.
More tax rises are coming.
Someone needs to show where we’re going to make those savings, how we’re going to make those savings, and what we’re going to do with the proceeds of it.
That’s us.”
GD: “The two child benefit cap. You stuck to it. Why? Because lots of people say, well, [removing it] it’ll end child poverty.”
KB: “It won’t. All it will do is bankrupt another generation. As you have said before.
We need to make sure that the money we spend is money we’re earning. Right now we are borrowing to pay welfare. This is crazy!
We’re not just borrowing to pay welfare. We’re borrowing to pay the interest on the on the other borrowing. It’s like taking out a credit card to pay off the last credit card. That’s what Labour is doing.
This has to stop, and we if we get people into work, if we can grow our economy, get businesses opening again… right now, they’re closing down, they’re letting go of staff. They’re not giving pay rises. Unemployment is increasing every single month.
More and more people are going to be going on benefits. More and more people are going to be needing a two child benefit cap. So we’ve got to start in the right place by making sure that the people who pay wages create jobs [and] can do that without the government breathing down their necks.”
GD: “You said this is the worst job in politics. It’s often been described by people as the worst job in politics, but then you told me in the leadership campaign, you wanted to bring the fun back. Is it fun?”
KB: “It is fun. It is fun”
GD: [disbelieving] “Really?!”
KB: It is, it is fun.
And I want to bring the fun back to Conference as well. So I think that we’ve been overly… you know, previous leaderships have been overly controlling of Conference – ‘We don’t want this bad thing to happen. We don’t want anyone to say anything, you know, that might be news.’
I trust our members.
I think that we should relax a little bit…and people join the party so that they can do things they don’t just join, so that they can be given their instructions and go out. And that’s one of the things that I want to change. So we do need to bring the fun back.
And that means, you know, more parties, more socials, more things that are actually, you know, just that. They just remind people that we can put the party in Conservative party…
… and it’s fun also when we get our wins, when we’ve got Labour on the back foot.
You know, do I love doing PMQs? Because I like being at the dispatch box. And when you’re not in government, it’s not often that you can be at the dispatch box, actually… you know, making a change and having everybody watching and caring what you say.
So I do enjoy that, because it brings back some of that…
…but I want to be on the other side. I like answering questions more than I like asking them.
And I can see that Keir Starmer doesn’t like answering any questions, which also makes it fun. He wants to be the prosecutor. He’s very weak. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know a lot about the policy detail of his own government.
Whenever I went into specifics, he couldn’t answer the questions. But people don’t enjoy those very analytical PMQ’s and going into policy detail because they don’t understand whether he’s right or wrong either. So I’ve kept it lighter, but we are seeing a lot of mistakes that Labour is making.
We also can see how we’re going to solve them and solving things and fixing them is fun.” (19:35 in audio)
GD: Be honest. Do you really love PMQs? You know that you’ve had a few bad reviews of PMQs? …I mean, is it nerve wracking?
KB: “Yeah, it was right at the beginning, because it was very different, but less so now, so not really. But I look at the people writing the bad reviews – none of them could do what I’m doing. None of those people could stand in the arena and take that.
There’s 120 Conservative MPs. You’ve got 400 and something you know, braying Labour donkeys all screaming and what people are watching on TV is often different from what’s happening in the chamber.
What happens in the chamber is that it’s actually very loud. Many people can’t hear what I’m saying, but I know that the people watching on telly are seeing something different, so I try and make sure that that audience in particular can see what’s going on.
But also, one former leader of the opposition said, ‘you can’t win at PMQs because they always get the last say. So even a score draw is good’ – and I’ve had more than score draws.
My very last PMQs …you know, he let go of his Ambassador [Peter Mandelson], the one before that, Angela Rayner – we knew she was going, I wasn’t quite sure, you know, we knew she was in trouble, I wasn’t quite sure whether her story would stack up. I actually thought I would get two or three more PMQs on her [but] he was gone very soon.
We did the work on that. We did all the investigations, gave it to the papers.
So Labour MPs should be worried, because right now, Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, is the one person who we can see there lots of allegations about fraudulent behaviour with, what was declared and so on. And we want to keep pushing that.
We think it’s very important that people understand what kind of government that they have.”
GD: “Isn’t one of the lessons of what’s happened to Labour is that you need to be very careful about what you say in opposition?”
KB: “Yes, yes, indeed. And what people can see is that they are hypocrites.
They made a lot of noise when we were in government, and Keir Starmer said he was going to lead a government of transparency and whatnot. Within a few days of him getting into office, he became embroiled in the Lord Ali sleaze, scandal and so on.
So I want to make sure that we’re talking about what we can do. We’re not playing holier than thou the way Labour did.
You know we want everybody to be working to the highest possible standards… I’m sure once in a while, there’ll be some people who fall short. But what I’m not doing is pretending the Conservative MPs are perfect. We’re not. What we are are people who recognise that people are flawed, make allowances for that, and we don’t want to be a country where the people who are in there [government] are neither competent nor honest. We’ve got to make sure that we bring honesty and competency through and that’s one of the things that I’m focused on.
GD: “Are you thinking about – or giving any thought to – an attempt to sabotage conference by Reform, by calling a press conference on Friday or Saturday?”
KB: “Well, I’m sure they will. That’s but that’s what they do.
Nigel Farage has said that he wants to destroy the Conservative Party. I’m sure that he’s going to try a stunt or two, but that is what he is about, stunts. If he ever got into government, he would try and do government-by-stunts. He would not actually know how to do things.
So I wouldn’t be surprised”
GD: “Unveiling one of yours, crossing the floor is a little more dangerous than just a stunt.”
KB: It is… the thing is, it is still a stunt. If people want to be notches on Nigel Farage’s bedpost, I will remind them of people who went to Labour. The same thing happened when Labour was doing well last year, just before the election, we had Dan Poulter and Natalie Elphick crossed the floor.
Lots of people run to the party they think is ahead, the party that was ahead last year is now very behind, everybody hates them [Labour]
We’ve got, we need, people who believe in what we believe.
If people want nationalisation or the two child benefit cap lifted and they want to go to Reform for that – if they want more net zero, because there’s actually a lot of people who’ve gone to Reform who are big net zero fans who’ve left our party – they can all go there and sit there. I don’t think they’re building a coherent party.
Our party is becoming more coherent”
GD: “Loosing someone like Danny must have hurt a bit?”
KB: “It’s very sad to see someone like Danny go. He’s given his reasons.
I think, of course, that he is very wrong to go. I think that he will regret that, but I can’t focus on that any more than we could focus on Natalie Elphick or Dan Poulter.
People will, when you have a long, tough journey, it’s sad, but some people – you don’t want to lose anyone on the way – but you can’t stop the journey because somebody’s lost their way.
Got to keep going.”
GD: “Are we a party that’s being held back by people who would be more comfortable in the Lib Dems?”
KB: “I do not believe that for a second.
We have differences of opinion, my job is to show what the Conservative party under Kemi Badenoch looks like.
It’s a party that believes in lower taxes. It’s a party that wants a better environment, but it’s not going to do silly things like set a net zero target that will bankrupt the country and not actually deliver a better environment.
And there are many people who because they said some things in government are having to let go of previous policies that we don’t agree with anymore. You know, a lot of the stuff like renters reform, which was actually very bad for the housing market, we’ve junked.
There are lots of things which we’ve just said we’re not doing this anymore… football regulator and all of that. All of the things that are just distractions, the barnacles on the boat. No, we’re not doing this.
So I think there will be some people who have to look at what they’ve said previously and how they adjust under new leadership. But the fact of the matter is that if there were Lib Dems in our party, they would have gone to the Lib Dems.
We are a conservative party. We are the Conservative Party.
We are a measured party. We are strong on borders, strong on the economy, strong on business, strong on family. How to make people’s lives better and preserving the very best of our heritage.
That’s what we’re about.”
GD: “Could you have been stronger on ID cards? A lot of people read it as ambiguity. [You said] “there are arguments for and against” and they leapt on that?
KB: Yes, but I’m a very nuanced person.
Digital ID already exists, so we can’t say we’re against [some] digital ID when we brought in. You know how you sign into HMRC, all of that is digital ID.
So I’m being very specific, so I don’t sound like I’m throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
We are against mandatory digital ID, which you need to use to exercise your rights as a citizen.
Absolutely not.
Because, first of all, this…those aren’t the values of this country. But secondly, you look at the incompetence of this government.
Does anyone really believe that Keir Starmer is going to be able to look after all of our ID?
When they put it on one database, that is constantly accessed live, that it will get hacked, and all our details go to hostile foreign actors?
They are not competent, hence we should not be bringing in those sorts of things where the government doesn’t even know how to deal with a lot of cyber security issues that exist right now.” (26:47 in audio)
GD: “You said, ‘my job is to hold the party together at a time when public, voters, still don’t trust us, may not be listening, and to see us to a point where they are.’ And some people said, when they read that and heard that, that didn’t sound like someone who thought they were going to Downing Street”
KB: (laughs) “I am …but I need a party that stays together to get to Downing Street. The biggest worry for me when I was standing for leader was that by the time I got the job, there wouldn’t even be a party left.
We were at risk of going bankrupt.
We were we were at risk of splitting into two, people who want to go one way and go another way.
Neither of those things has happened under my leadership. We should not be complacent. They can still happen.
We are going to do something that no one has done before: Come back in four years after a historic defeat. But the way to do that is going to be painful, very, very painful, and we have to stay the course, hold our nerve and endure it, and then we will come out the other side.
If we flap every single moment and worry why we haven’t got there after one day, or after one month, or after one year, we’re not going to get there.”
GD: “Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party. Thank you for talking to ConservativeHome.”
KB: “Thank you.”