Kemi Badenoch admits Tories made mistakes on Brexit, saying party had ‘no plan for growth outside EU’
Good morning. Keir Starmer is in Ukraine and, as Pippa Crerar and Luke Harding report, he is signing a 100-year partnership deal with the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
We will be covering the trip in detail in a live blog here.
Back in the UK it is also an important day for Kemi Badenoch, who is delivering a major speech on the subject “Rebuilding Trust”. She has been leader of the Conservative party for just over three months, and so far she has not had much success. Her performances in the Commons have been mediocre, her pronouncements on policy and values have either been predictable and reductive, and sometimes just bizarre, and she is being outplayed by Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK party is hoovering up her vote and is now level pegging with the Tories in the polls.
One problem Badenoch has is that she is leader of a party that suffered its worst election result in 200 years because its record in office was generally seen to be terrible. Badenoch has often said that the party made mistakes while it was in power, but she has not done much to disown former leaders and she has not managed to persuade voters yet that she represents a radical break with the past.
Today’s speech seems to be an attempt to change that. On the basis of the fairly lengthy extracts released overnight, it contains her strongest criticism yet of the mistakes made by the past government (of which she was part – but only at cabinet level from September 2022).
Here is the key passage.
I will acknowledge the Conservative Party made mistakes …
We announced that we would leave the European Union before we had a plan for growth outside the EU.
We made it the law that we would deliver net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. And only then did we start thinking about how we would do that.
We announced that we would lower immigration, but immigration kept going up.
These mistakes were made because we told people what they wanted to hear first and then tried to work it out later.
That is going to stop under my leadership. If we are going to turn our country around, we’re going to have to say some things that aren’t easy to hear.
The admission that the Tories failed on immigration sounds largely like a rehash of a speech Badenoch gave in November. She has frequently criticised net zero targets in the past. But what she is saying about Brexit does seem to be new.
Last year she criticised the fact that the last Conservative government organised a referendum on Brexit without a plan for implementing it if people voted to leave. This was a relatively bold thing to say, because it was obviously a rebuke to David Cameron, and at the time he was back in cabinet as foreign secretary. But comments like this were popular with the pro-Brexit Tory mainstream, who by that point were suspicious of Cameron.
Today Badenoch seems to be saying something slightly different – that Brexit went wrong not just because there was no plan in 2016, but because there was no plan in 2020. This means she’s also blaming Theresa May for Brexit failures, and probably Boris Johnson too. We will find out this afternoon quite how far she is willing to go in condemning Johnson, who is still popular with Tory members, but it seems to be a new approach.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Keir Starmer is in Kyiv, where he is meeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, and signing a 100-year partnership deal.
9.30am: Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
Morning: Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry as part of the module covering vaccines.
10.30am: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, gives a speech on British leadership and links with Europe.
Noon: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions at Holyrood.
1.30pm: Kemi Badenoch delivers a speech on restoring trust.
Afternoon: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, holds a meeting with regulators, urging them to do more to promote growth.
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Key events
Badenoch says politicians are refusing to focus on what matters.
This has to stop because the dream of every generation, that our children can have a better future than we did, is slowly dying. It’s dying because as our problems have got more urgent, our politics has got less serious.
Since July, there has been more discussion in parliament on Oasis tickets than on our 2.7 trillion pound debt pile. That has to stop.
The young people I speak to are deeply despondent that their country is unable to provide them better opportunities, let alone guarantee health, wealth and prosperity.
Badenoch claims Labour policies are making things worse.
Business Success is treated with suspicion, a burden to be tolerated rather than celebrated.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Last Friday, I spoke with a group of workers in Derbyshire. They are the backbone of our country. They have little time for politics. They’re not interested because they are trying to build a better life for themselves and their families. They want government to do what it says it’s going to do, and they don’t really ask for much more.
One lady, a single parent, told me just how much impact rising prices were still having, that it just seemed to be one thing on top of another, that nothing seems to be getting better, and it feels like no one is looking at it.
Part of the problem is that Labour ministers don’t have business experience, she says.
Badenoch says Britons not as rich as they think and refusing ‘to live within our means’
Badenoch accuses Labour of making mistakes, and says the last Conservative government made mistakes too, using the passages briefed in advance. See 9.36am and 11.45am.
Badenoch goes on to say the UK is not as rich as it thinks.
If we are going to turn our country around, we’re going to have to say some things that aren’t easy to hear.
Let’s start with our problems. We think we are rich, but we are living off the inheritance that previous generations left behind, a complacency that Britain will always be wealthy, and a refusal to live within our means.
We owe it to that next generation to leave an inheritance for them and not mortgage their future to make our lives more comfortable, and that will demand the kind of tough, soul-searching conversations we’re not having right now.
Energy supply is vulnerable, more vulnerable than ever, and our energy is far, far too expensive when it should be secure, cheap, plentiful.
Demography is destiny. People are having fewer children. Our society is getting older. We are living longer and needing more support towards the end of our lives. Look at productivity. A shrinking group of people are working to support an ever growing number of those who are unable or unwilling to work.
The information age means it is easier than ever for rogue governments to destabilise us and for rogue companies and countries to steal our know how.
And – no ifs, no buts – we simply cannot take all the millions of people who want to come here from elsewhere. Our country is our home. It is not a hotel. If people arriving don’t want to integrate into British culture, they shouldn’t be here.
Badenoch accuses Starmer of ‘legalism, not leadership’
Badenoch says it is “hard not to feel sorry for the Labor government” because they have walked into some of the same traps the Tories walked into.
They have walked into some of the same traps that we did, like assuming that you can just keep raising taxes and there’ll be no consequences.
But I don’t feel sorry for them, because, as we saw last week when Keir Starmer labeled people calling for an inquiry, far right, he is what is wrong with politics. It’s legalism, not leadership.
Badenoch says politcians have not ‘told the truth’ about state of UK
Kemi Badenoch is speaking now.
She starts by saying we are all getting poorer.
We are all getting poorer. Politicians across all parties have not told the truth about this, and instead keep prescribing quick fixes.
And she says politicians have not been honest.
The truth is that Britain is failing to compete in a world that is changing and is not working for its citizens, certainly not the way it used to.
Back in the 1980s it took just months to save up for a house deposit. Now it is over a decade.
And for many, the dream of owning a home is impossible.
Jobs which didn’t require a degree 20 years ago now need to loading up to 50,000, pounds of debt on someone just starting out.
One of my favorite quotes is from the economist Thomas Sowell. He says he says when you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has reportedly been threatened with legal action over the government’s failure to implement the recommendations of the 2022 report from the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA), PA Media reports. PA says:
Maggie Oliver, a former detective who resigned from Greater Manchester Police in 2012, warned Yvette Cooper in a pre-action letter yesterday that she would take her to court unless she takes “urgent steps to allay widespread public concern” over gangs sexually exploiting children.
In a statement from the charity set up in her name, Oliver said she had put Cooper “on notice” that she would seek a judicial review in the high court unless the home secretary “publicly confirms that she will implement all 20 of the recommendations of IICSA and publishes a timetable for implementation of those recommendations, and takes urgent steps to allay widespread public concern regarding the grooming and sexual abuse by organised gangs/groups”.
If Cooper “does not agree to these reasonable requests”, Oliver added: “I will issue an application to the high court seeking permission to challenge the secretary of state’s refusal to take action on urgent issues of child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation.”
The Kemi Badenoch speech will start soon.
There is a live feed here.
Tories claim Lib Dem plan for customs union with EU would ‘undo’ Brexit vote
The Conservatives have accused the Liberal Democratos of wanting to “undo a democratic vote”. Referring to Ed Davey’s speech this morning proposing a customs union with the EU, Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, said:
Just like Labour, the Liberal Democrats are looking to undo a democratic vote.
Our divorce from the EU was finalised and politicians in this country should be focused on delivering for the British people. If they think overturning the democratic will of this country, and damaging the special relationship we have with one of our closest allies, is a good approach then it is clear they are even more unfit for government than we thought.
Ed Davey should spend less time posturing and more time on actually working for the British people in the face of this disastrous Labour government.
Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016. But the leave campaign never gave details of exactly how this would be achieved, and it took some years before the government decided on a version of Brexit that involved leaving the customs union. When Theresa May was prime minister, she proposed a Brexit deal involving a customs partnership with the EU which would have been quite similar to customs union membership.
Labour MP Sarah Champion welcomes reports that Yvette Cooper to announce support for local inquiries into grooming gangs
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, is expected to announce “a plan for government-backed local inquiries into grooming gangs” in her statement to MPs later, ITV News is reporting.
It says she will also announce new directions for police about how they should investigate cases of child sexual exploitation.
The news has been welcomed by the Labour MP Sarah Champion, who has been calling for a national inquiry, but one involving local inquiries feeding into an overarching national one. She posted this on social media.
Wow! Looks like the Government is accepting my 5 point plan to prevent child abuse and expose cover-ups over Grooming gangs! Statement approx 2pm – I’ll be all over the details!!
By amazing coincidence, the Cooper statement will take place around the same time as the Kemi Badenoch speech. (It might have started at exactly the same time if the David Lammy statement on the Middle East had just lasted the usual hour – but that one has already lasted 100 minutes, and is still running.)
Labour have not been spooked by Badenoch’s performance as Tory leader. But they not entirely complacent either, and if a Cooper announcement on a topic popular with GB News, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail etc means those outfits devote less of their reporting space to the Tory leader, the Labour spin machine may regard that as a good thing.
UK should use offer of state visit to get Trump to attend pro-Ukraine summit, says Davey
Peter Walker
Peter Walker is the Guardian’s senior political correspondent.
The UK should offer Donald Trump a state visit on the condition he agrees to a sit-down summit with Volodymyr Zelenskyy as part of an openly “transactional” relationship with the returning US president, Ed Davey has said.
In a speech which also saw the Lib Dem leader call for the UK to seek a new customs union with the EU to help insulate itself from the potential impacts of Trump, Davey said that while the American president could not be trusted, he could also very much not be ignored.
The reality is, unfortunately, very clear: the incoming Trump administration is a threat to peace and prosperity for the UK, across Europe and around the world.
For the next four years, the UK cannot depend on the presence of the United States to be a reliable partner on security, defence or the economy.
The only way for the UK to deal with Trump, he argued would be from a position of strength, requiring both closer links to Europe and, when interacting with the president, to do so “with our eyes wider to the kind of man he is,” Davey argued.
He’s transactional, so let’s treat him that way.
The good news is we have leverage. We have something Trump desperately wants – a state visit, the pageantry of Buckingham Palace, a banquet with the King.
We all know he craves it. So I say we give it to him, but only if he delivers what we need first for Britain and Europe’s defence and security.
This would involve Trump agreeing to attend a UK-convened summit with Zelenskyy and other European leaders to pave a future for Ukraine, including discussion of how to use frozen Russian assets to pay for Ukrainian weapons.
Elsewhere in the speech, which marked a renewed focus on post-Brexit links and international affairs following a Liberal Democrat election campaign focused largely on domestic issues, Davey slammed Keir Starmer for what he called a vastly cautious approach to Europe.
The prime minister has at least recognised The need to reset our relationship with the EU. So far, I’m afraid that only seems to amount to saying no more politely than the Conservatives.
As well as calling for talks to begin on the UK seeking a bespoke customs union deal with Brussels, with a plan to complete this by 2030, Davey also called for immediate action on a reciprocal youth mobility scheme with EU member states.
Reform UK says Mike Amesbury should resign as MP after guilty plea
Reform UK says Mike Amesbury should resign as an MP after pleading guilty to assault today. (See 10.48am.) Zia Yusuf, the Reform chair, said:
Today Mike Amesbury has pleaded guilty to assault.
The great people of Runcorn deserve far better than this.
We call on Mike Amesbury to do the honourable thing and resign immediately so a byelection can be held.
Labour claims Badenoch ‘doing exact opposite’ of restoring trust
The Labour party has already sent out two press releases about the Kemi Badenoch speech, which is not starting for another hour or so.
One of them is a briefing noted headed “5 reasons Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives can’t ‘rebuild trust’”. For the record, here are the five headline reasons given by Labour. (The full briefing is a lot longer.)
1) The Conservatives have continued to make unfunded commitments despite crashing the economy when in government
2) Clinging to discredited ideas risks groundhog day for the Tory open-border experiment that delivered record migration
3) Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet is packed full of the politicians who delivered 14 years of failure
4) The Conservatives have continued the chaos and infighting that led to the Tories losing the trust of the British people
5) Kemi Badenoch says personal responsibility is for other Tories, not her
And Labour has also issued this statement on the speech from Ellie Reeves, the Labour chair.
The public rightly lost trust in the Conservatives after 14 long years of failure in government. Far from rebuilding trust, Kemi Badenoch is doing the exact opposite. Another speech, but no apology for her role in Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget that crashed the economy and left a £22bn black hole in the public finances.
The Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch have nothing to offer in opposition apart from recklessly continuing to make unfunded spending commitments and overseeing yet more Conservative chaos and infighting. The Tories haven’t listened and they haven’t learned.
