Kemi Badenoch and I start talking the moment we get into her office. Her pre-Conference diary is crazy and I want to make the most of our 30 minutes together. At one point she’s focussed on one of the mornings news stories. We are discussing the details pre-interview and she carries on a focussed analysis whilst nonchalantly doing her eye drops and and opening a box of tissues to tidy up.
The lady can multi-task. I’m just listening and trying to get my recording equipment working.
This is the second time she’s spoken to ConHome just before the party gathers …and I’ve already warned her team I’ll be bringing a couple of the criticisms readers frequently make to us, for her to answer. We both realise, me in compiling them, she in answering, that some of them remain completely unchanged as accusations from a year ago, whereas she is quite clear, with the change in Labour Prime Minister, and a change in her team, the party she leads to Birmingham next week is very different from the party of 2024 – and she’s clear: those that deny that – were never going to listen anyway.
With a handful of polls in recent weeks putting the Conservatives in the 20-22 per cent mark – some above Reform – some back at 18 per cent and below them the question persists ‘she might be popular but her brand seems not to be?’
Burnham’s own Conference, and his speech, judging by the effusive reaction on the left has significantly raised the bar from his predecessor.
Now the limelight will once again switch to her – and those watching will ask her and her party: “OK. So what have you got?”
This then, is our verbatim conversation about just those thing.
Giles Dilnot: Thank you very much for your time pre-conference. I think last year some of the framing, you may not have liked it, but it was rather; this is do or die for you, for Kemi. I’m not sure that it is this year. What do you think it is? I’ve sort of put it as ‘we’re getting the brand back together’.
Kemi Badenoch: Yeah, I did like that. I did like that.
It’s, you know, both the band and the brand, and it’s very much about showing what the new conservative team is. So, in 2024, we lost 250 Conservative MPs. That’s pretty much most of the party, and 25 per cent of the 118 MPs we’ve got now are brand new. So – I think it’s actually more than 25 per cent – I think it might be close to 30 per cent – at the next election, we will be nearly a whole new party. It will just be, you know, old timers like me, (laughs) and people who are there in 2024.
And I want people to see that we are freshening up the brand, like it’s sort of polishing it away, so that people can see the gleaming Conservative Party that they’ve been looking for, for a long time.
GD Do you think that there’s only so much you can do to show that you’ve changed, such that those who say ‘they haven’t changed’ were always determined to say that?
KB Yes, there will be people who… and I see this, I’ve seen this because sometimes the researchers point it out to me, people saying, “I’m never voting Conservative again” and then we then find out that actually they never have voted Conservative. So you can’t be swayed by online comments or social media. The best way to know what’s going on is knocking on doors.
That’s where you have your actual data, and you know what people are thinking. And what we know is that people, especially the people who went to Labour or stayed at home, are no longer angry.
They want to see what the new offer is. There are still some people who are angry… the anger is less, but they can see that this government has chucked out a prime minister with a huge majority, the Labour Party, that is, and that means that governing in this era is a lot tougher, and I think people recognise that.
GD Do you think there’s a difference between ‘not angry’ but also ‘suspicious’…?
KB No, I don’t think they are suspicious…
GD …or just reluctant listeners?
KB No, I think that people, and those of us in the political bubble, forget this. But people are getting on with their lives.
They’re taking their kids to school. They’re making dinner. They’re going to work. They don’t think about politics or an election, the way we consume it 24/7, and there isn’t an election right now. I think that if there, if there’s an election, things will change very quickly. And I’m preparing myself for an early election. You know, we had a shadow cabinet away day, where we went through it all.
It’s money, it’s policies, it’s campaigning, people, and all of that is in hand.
GD Yeah, so I was going to ask about are we ready? Because from talking to members of your team, it’s like ‘yeah, we can be ready, but it’s not ideal’
KB We are more ready now than we were for the 2024 election. (laughts) Let me just let me put that out…
GD Well, I remember that!
KB …Yes, we are more ready now, and yes, there’s always you know the more time you have, the more you can do. Obviously, if there’s an election tomorrow, we will be, you know, in a different place from if there’s an election next week. It’s.. it’s that sort of thing.
GD He sort of ruled it out. But then, if he was bluffing, that’s exactly what he’d want us to think. Do you think he’s bluffing?
KB So this is the thing, you know. Politics is about events. He may or he may not be bluffing. Something weird could happen. You’ve just got to be ready. But I think more than anything that the world is so volatile. We are at risk of yet another black swan event. Things that would only happen, you know, once every other generation now happen, every other year. And so that’s how I think about it. I think that too many of us think it might go back to the 1990s, where there was quite a lot of stability and there wasn’t that much news about. But what the last 10 years have shown us is that there’s a lot of unpredictability and volatility, and that’s what I’m. That’s what I…. I’m good at dealing with that.
I don’t need certainty in order to function. I can work even when there’s a lot of volatility around my environment, and I think that’s what we need right now.
GD That shadow cabinet away day, I know you have them regularly, but important, no? Because now the trick is to shine the mirror on them a bit, right? Because it’s been your show up until now.
KB Yes, and it has to be very much about the team, and even the way I am running shadow cabinet is different. I don’t want departmental silos.
We start with what’s the priority.
National security is a priority, so there is a national security team, not just people shadowing a department, which is actually not the way the world works. So I’ve got Tom Tugendhat who’s the shadow foreign secretary. I’ve got James Cartledge on Defence, Alex Burghart deputy leader – but he’s doing a coordinating role because you need sometimes people to do the pipework between different departments….
GD …and this is the point of the ‘economic unit’ as well?….
KB That’s it, and it’s the same there.
You know, it can’t just be a single shadow chancellor. You need, you need quite a lot of people looking at policy. So we’ve got Andrew Griffith leading, but Claire Coutinho is also there to make sure that we’re not just talking about, you know, the macroeconomics, but what people think when it comes to their living standards and cost of living day to day.
Julia Lopez who is covering for her maternity leave, for instance: she’s particularly interested in, the small businesses everybody forgets about, like nurseries. People forget that nurseries are a business, and then again, who’s doing the wiring and the pipe work? That’s Richard Fuller, and that way, everything we’re doing is co-ordinated when we work in teams, and the dynamic is different because we’ve got a different opponent.
The last shadow cabinet was dealing with the Starmer government. This Shadow Cabinet is for a Burnham government.
GD Speaking of that, last time I came demanding ‘more policy, please Kemi …let’s see more policy.’ But the funny thing is, the biggest viral clip of you was more ‘vibe and principle’, and as you know was the confrontation with that protester, and then I was thinking about the… you know… Burnham’s favourite biscuit and how he likes his tea…
KB …his favourite biscuit is – ‘chips and gravy’
GD The fact is though, it doesn’t hurt to know weird things about your leaders, does it?
KB
…Hmmm…
GD …because, you don’t love that stuff.
KB No, I don’t. I mean, I don’t hate that stuff either. It’s just not me.
I don’t. I don’t run around saying, “Look at my favourite biscuit”, and “here’s my favourite drink”, and because – I think sometimes politicians do those things in a contrived way, and that they’re not actually being authentic, you know. Which is why Andy Burnham said ‘chips and gravy’ when he was asked about biscuits – because he wasn’t really answering the question. I mean, people ask me what I like, I’ll say so, but when they go into the ballot box, they’re not going to be thinking, ‘does she have the same biscuits that I like to have with my tea?’
And I’m not sure those things actually tell you very much about a politician.
GD So, what’s the vibe you want the party to get across about you?
KB The vibe for the party is now, is ‘new generation’ okay? I find it interesting when people think of Tories as just countryside and Tweed and over 80, and of course, that is in our party, but it’s also it’s got a very urban element, got a very female element, it’s got younger elements as well.
What we are about now: is common sense.
So common sense, with a new generation…and the shadow cabinet that I assemble, the last one and now this one, is full of people who believe in in stuff. And you look at some of the people who have joined: Katie Lamb, Joy Morrissey, Tom Tugendhat. These are people who you know, you know, where they stand. You know what they believe in. And I want the Conservative Party to be a brand where everybody knows what it does and it does what it says on the tin.
I think where we went wrong was in trying to be all things to all men, and then we lost everybody.
GD I’m not going to pick him out, but you know that there are certain things that I get thrown at me about the party all the time. Some from reform, and sometimes from Reform-curious, and sometimes just disillusion Tories (but still haven’t made up their mind). One of them, and we actually talked about this this time last year, is the ‘army of Lib Dems hiding in your party.’ Let’s move on from whether that’s true or not – because I know you don’t think it is. -but it has morphed into ‘well, Kemi is doing fine, and we kind of like what she’s saying, but they’re not going to let her do it. They’ll stop her’?
KB So I don’t think anyone’s ever stopped me from doing what I want to do. They certainly have tried, but they’ve… they have not succeeded.
We need to show that we have changed.
This is why I’ve said: if you want to stand as a candidate, you’ve got to agree with certainly the two policies that I think will make the biggest difference in solving the country’s problems: leaving the ECHR and scrapping net zero targets.
But also I think people forget that this is not the party even from 2024. Like I said, 25 to 30 percent of people are new, but even the people who may have had a tendency to want to go left instead of right, they all heard their constituents. I mean, if you survive the 2024 election, you saw your most loyal voters going elsewhere, or staying at home, or saying, “No, we’re not voting for you this time”
So that’s why I don’t think it’s something we need to worry about. Apart from the fact that we’re getting new people in, even the people who are here, they know what the public think.
GD Now, the other side of that, the people who do feel like, ‘oh, you’ve, you’ve said no to that sensible centrism we had before’, and they say, ‘well, there’s a whole load of voters out there that you’re ignoring by copying or aping reform’?’ What do you say to them?
So I march to the beat of my own drum.
What I am offering is what Kemi’s Conservative Party is like.
I’m not interested in what other parties are doing. I’m interested in what I think is right. As I keep saying, it’s not about left or right. It’s about right and wrong, and many of those people who say that we should be more centrist, they can’t actually define what centrism is, and I think that there are some people who are just ideologically wedded to doing what we did for 14 years, and if that was… if it was so wonderful, then why did we lose the election? That’s all I would say to them.
GD Which is the same point you made to the Labour Party when they were defending Starmer. ‘If it’s so wonderful…” but, we do still get whacked with the ‘Come on, Kemi….’ -you know, you just made out that ‘Well, I’m one of the old timers’ – It is that you were there and you didn’t do it? …“You were there and you didn’t do that, and now you’re complaining about it?” I mean, I get that you weren’t the leader then, but they’re still going to keep saying it.” and we probably have to keep answering
KB But I did do it. As business secretary – I deregulated. As Equalities Minister, I stood up for Conservative values, again and again.
I’m the only person in this parliament who has actually ended the supremacy of European courts, the European Court of Justice, which I did with the retained EU law bill. So I know I can do it again with the ECHR. No one has done that. Kier Starmer hadn’t done anything like that – and he’s the ‘famous lawyer’, Andy Burnham has not, and never will… and neither has Nigel Farage.
So when people say, “Oh, but he didn’t do it” that’s like imagine if in 1979 people said, “Well, you were in Ted Heath’s cabinet, so instead we’re going to go for, you know, some people who have never done this before, just to see what it’s like.” It’s not… it’s what people say when they’re looking for reasons to dislike you.
What I would tell them: is those of us who were not happy with the direction the party was going are now in charge. That’s what matters.
GB Ok don’t hate me for this…but that argument of ‘I tried to do things and I did do things, but nobody listened’ is exactly what Suella says…
KB Well, she didn’t do anything. She just said nobody listened.
You know, it’s …and I think that if all you’re doing is moaning, then actually you’re sort of proving the point that you don’t know how to do anything.
I mean, all I remember is that within about two weeks of becoming Home Secretary, Suella got sacked for sending an email to the wrong person. So she couldn’t send an email to the right place without it getting lost. I’m not sure she was going to do anything about the borders, whatever she’s tweeting now.
And this is why I say that the people who have gone to Reform are the ones who belong in Reform…they’re never going to deliver anything.
The people who are in the Conservative Party now, are the people who have common sense, have got a plan, and will get things done. You don’t hear me saying I tried and I failed. You hear me saying, “Well, here’s what I got done. Here are some things where I got halfway, and here are some things that you know we didn’t get done, but I’d like to do later on.”
Last week, for instance, I announced that we were bringing back VAT-free shopping. That was something where I was in the Treasury. I made the argument. I didn’t win the argument that we should keep VAT-free shopping. I was a junior minister. When I became the Business Secretary. I fought for that free shopping. I went to Japan to try and bring it back. Treasury said no. Now I’m the leader, and we’re going to do it.
So that’s what people can see. They can see they can see that I also leave evidence that I actually tried, not just writing op-eds saying I tried.
GD Has it been a lot easier, now they’ve gone…this job?
Oh yes, certainly. In terms of us being more united, yes, and the problems which were in our party – the infighting, people briefing against each other -that’s now gone to Reform. Every day we read something about people in Reform fighting like rats in a sack, whereas you know we’re one big happy family in the Conservative Party.
GD You talked a lot about welfare with the need to tackle it, that it’s ‘ballooning’. A bunch of people on the left came to me to say, “Well, if you look at the figures, it hasn’t ballooned that much with the benefits that you lot keep talking about” – we’re not wrong about that, though, are we? The welfare bill – even the prime minister and the chancellor have suggested that the welfare bill needs to come down – We’re not wrong about that and national debt is… that that’s the really big problem, isn’t it?
KB The really big problem is that we’re getting poorer. That’s the problem.
Debt, if you’re getting richer and you’re using the money for things that are going to pay off in the future, is not as serious as you not being able to increase productivity. That’s why the welfare situation is so terrible because those people are people who are not working, and irrespective of the amount that we’re paying them to stay at home, the fact that they’re not working also means that they’re not contributing to the wealth of the country.
GD Taking stuff off people is always really hard to sell, and I’ve seen us looking for a fairness argument to make that because – you know there’s no two ways about it – you say ‘you can’t have this anymore’ lots and lots of people get very angry and then don’t necessarily vote… for you. But I noticed the other day “we’re borrowing from our children” …’We can no longer borrow from our children to pay for this’ we seem to have found… you seem to have found, a line that works on that… that makes that argument; that it’s potentially about the damage done to the next generation?
KB So… that is a line that I’ve used long before I became leader. I’ve always talked about the inheritance for the next generation.
The fairness point that you make is actually that it is unfair not just to the next generation; it’s unfair to the people out today who are working and earning less than the people who are staying at home, it’s unfair to the taxpayer. It is even unfair to the people who are in need, who are on disability or other benefits, who then have to compete with others who can work, for the same resources.
GD Making all these arguments… Conference is going to be important about laying out the stall. But it feels like we’re in a new stage. We have moved into a new stage.
KB Yes
GD If we go with some kind of mountain analogy, taking us to a certain position, how steep, how hard is the next bit? Because every percentage point, every thing in this sort of multi-party situation we have, is just that much harder to get.
KB That’s right.
It’ll get harder before it gets easier, and in the first phase, I had that… it was harder, then it got easier. We’re in a new phase now.
The change in prime minister presents both advantages and disadvantages.
The disadvantage being he wants a break with the mistakes that the Starmer administration made, and the public might give him a chance for that. So the disadvantage is the honeymoon.
The advantage is that, well, first of all, I have now been in the job, so I’m not learning how to be leader of the opposition like I had to first time with Starmer. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is that he is more old school Labour in terms of socialism, tax and spend. He is not a technocrat in the same way that Kier Starmer was. So the thing about technocrats is that if you’re not really paying attention, they can sound like they’re saying something different from what they are actually saying.
Whereas with people who are ideological, you know that they’re saying – what they mean. And Andy Burnham has told us what he means: social security before national security. More taxes. More public control. That’s more nationalisation.
We know what this is, and we know it doesn’t work.
GD It is, I guess, in order to do that thing that people want…I mean, the dilemma is always that they want mid-Atlantic taxes and Scandinavian public services. But he wants to serve the public services. Where does that leave you if you’re going “well, you know, there is no money”?
KB I think that that’s a false choice.
I think that that we can have good public services and reasonable levels of taxation.
The way to do it is to make sure that, first of all, you have an economy that is going gangbusters, and government focuses on those essential public services, front line, that people really need that no one else can deliver.
It’s when government decides to get involved in all sorts of things that are not really things that it needs to do. It gets distracted. Ministers spend time doing the easy stuff that will help them get an announcement and a photo in the newspaper, rather than the tough stuff that’s less glamorous, but which makes life easier for all those people out there.
GD When you come back from the Conference, there’s Budget. I think last year it was like could she do conference well. That’s tick one. Then it’s the budget… This budget’s got to be one of the most important we’ve had in a long time?
KB Well, I mean that’s what people said last year, the year before. So every budget is the most important in this era…
GD Yeah but but in the context you’ve just described, of a change at the top, I becomes quite sharp focus?
KB So…the thing is the change at the top is more clear between Burnham and Starmer.
I’m not sure, other than the fact that he’s a guy, that Healey is going to prove more different than Richard Reaves, because he’s not talking about the defence stuff that he was talking about before. So where’s what’s happened to that John Healey?
And you know, I’m someone who thought that John Healey, you know, acted with a lot of principle with that resignation. But if the next budget does not cover what we need for defence, then I do think actually Andy Burnham should call an election. I do think that that John Healey will prove to have resigned not for principle, but for a bigger job, and that would be quite sad.
GD Last year, it was very obvious when I hosted you at the 22 (ConservativeHome 1922 Committee Reception – Sunday night of Conference) that you were really up for it. You were really up for it. Are you excited about this year, or is it like ‘okay, this is now just part of the job- gotta keep knocking them out’?
KB Yeah, you’ve just got to keep, you know, knocking it out of the park wherever you are… you have to… whether it’s in Parliament with the set key speeches, King’s speech, Burnham’s first outing PMQs, whether it’s conference or a budget or even a ConHome event, I want to use every opportunity to show people what I’m about – it’s common sense, common sense, common sense.
That’s the Conservative Party now.
GD Kemi, thank you very much indeed.
KB Thank you, Giles
You can listen to the conversation here