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Kemi Badenoch has suggested she will offer all six candidates in the Tory leadership race a job in her shadow cabinet if she is elected leader.

The Tory leadership hopeful, who is competing against Robert Jenrick to become the next head of the Tory party, said she “did not know” if they would like the roles she would give them and that she has not yet made them any offers.

The current shadow housing secretary – who served as business secretary when the Conservatives were in power – dodged questions over whether she wanted to be prime minister, saying her ultimate ambition was to “make the country more Conservative” to deliver “better growth” and a “better life” for everyone.

She told the Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge: “I don’t think it’s about wanting to be prime minister.

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“I think it’s not an award. It’s not like winning a competition. It’s actually a very serious job that requires a lot of sacrifice.”

Acknowledging the potential downsides of the job, including the toll it could take on her family life, Ms Badenoch said the role of prime minister “changes your life forever. It changes the life of your family. So I’m very, very wary of saying, ‘Well, I want to be prime minister’.”

She added: “I am very well aware of how life could change, for the worse in, in many circumstances. But I also worry even more about the direction of the country and what will happen unless we can turn things around.”

Ms Badenoch is widely seen as the favourite to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative leader following the party’s worst ever general election result in July.

The race between herself and Mr Jenrick, a former immigration minister, has become increasingly acrimonious after her opponent claimed the party would “die” under her leadership.

It came after Ms Badenoch launched an attack on Mr Jenrick’s “integrity”, suggesting she was a better fit for the top job as she had never been sacked because of a “whiff of impropriety”.

The comments, made to The Telegraph newspaper, appeared to be a dig at Mr Jenrick’s involvement in a planning dispute when he was housing secretary in 2020 – a position he was later sacked from by Boris Johnson.

However, Ms Badenoch was challenged about her own integrity after she admitted that she had hacked the website of Baroness Harman in 2008 and added a picture of former prime minister Boris Johnson.

Robert Jenrick with wife Michal Berkner before he delivers a speech.
Pic: PA
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Robert Jenrick with wife Michal Berkner.
Pic: PA

Ms Badenoch responded by telling Ridge that she acknowledged she had committed a “summary offence” akin to a speeding ticket and that “I do like playing pranks… I have humour”.

The former minister admitted that while it was “very amusing at the time” before she was an MP herself, now that she was in parliament she has seen the “hassle” MPs receive.

Giving an insight into her character, Ms Badenoch said she was no “wallflower” and described herself as “blunt”, “forthright” and “confident”.

She also addressed some of the negative stereotyping she had received, including accusations that she was “aggressive” as well as “lazy”.

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But she said wanted to avoid making accusations of racism and misogyny because she wanted to “believe the best in everybody”.

Looking ahead to this week’s budget, where the state of the country’s public services will dominate the conversation, Ms Badenoch said she did not believe the UK was “earning enough for the public services that the country wants”.

“Right now, we’re paying more on debt interest than we’re spending on defence,” she said.

“We’re not earning enough in order to cover our costs, and we need to rewire the state and the system in order to deliver what people want.”

Regarding the funding of the NHS, she said “everything should be on the table for discussion”.

She also hit out at some recent policies floated by the Labour government, including a ban on smoking in pub gardens and plans for a football regulator – with the previous Tory government kickstarting plans for the latter.

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“I think that the state does infantilise a lot of things,” she said.

“Do we really need to ban smoking in pub gardens? Do we really need a football regulator?

“These things are micro, on their own – but the cumulative impact of everything that the state is doing, I think is too much.

“A lot of these things are not public services. We keep creating more bureaucracy, more regulation. And yet the public services are not improving.”

She continued: “I think that’s one of the things that we as a party got wrong – we, the Conservatives, follow this model.

“It’s what I call the Blairite sort of third way model. And maybe it worked in 1997 – but it does not work now.”

The party membership vote will close at 5pm on Thursday 31 October and the winner will be announced on Saturday 2 November.

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Wyoming proposes bill for Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

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Wyoming proposes bill for Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

Wyoming has become the latest US state to propose a bill for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, just days before Donald Trump’s US presidential inauguration.

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Was Tusk doing Brussels’s bidding with his ‘Breturn’ plea?

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Was Tusk doing Brussels's bidding with his 'Breturn' plea?

When Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is just one point behind you in the opinion polls, the last thing you want to be reminded about is Brexit.

If you’re Sir Keir Starmer, that is.

No doubt Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, was trying to be friendly. After all, as Sir Keir said, they share a passion for Arsenal Football Club.

But when Mr Tusk declared at their joint news conference in Warsaw that his dream was “instead of a Brexit, we will have a Breturn”, Sir Keir visibly cringed.

Was it an ambush? Not quite. But it was certainly awkward for the UK prime minister. He stood stiffly and didn’t respond, not once uttering the word “Brexit”.

Mr Tusk, however, has form for bemoaning Brexit. He was, after all, the president of the European Council when the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016.

He might now be in his second spell as Poland’s PM, but his five years at the EU make him the ultimate Brussels insider, who’s never made any attempt to hide his feelings on Brexit.

Prior to the UK referendum, in September 2015, he said Brexit “could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also of western political civilisation in its entirety”.

His most outspoken attack on the UK’s Eurosceptics came in 2019 when the-then prime minister Theresa May was struggling to get a deal. He spoke of “what the special place in hell looks like for those who promoted Brexit“.

Keir Starmer and Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrive to lay wreaths at The Wall of Remembrance .
Pic: PA
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Sir Keir also visited Ukraine on his trip to Eastern Europe. Pic: PA


Standing alongside Sir Keir, he revealed that “for obvious reasons” they discussed co-operation between the UK and the EU. He recalled that his emotional reaction to the referendum in 2016 was “I already miss you”.

He went on: “This is not just about emotions and sentiments – I am aware this is a dream of mine, that instead of a Brexit we will have a Breturn.

“Perhaps I’m labouring under an illusion. I’d rather be an optimist and harbour these dreams in my heart – sometimes they come true in politics.”

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A dream? Or a calculated move? As a Brussels insider, was Mr Tusk speaking for the EU as a whole? Was he doing Brussels’ bidding?

He may have returned to lead his homeland, but he remains a key player in Brussels.

On becoming Poland’s PM in 2023, he ended a dispute with Brussels which unlocked billions of frozen EU funds for his country.

He also orchestrated the return of his centre-right ally Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission president.

And Poland has just taken over the rotating presidency of the EU, which means Mr Tusk will be hugely influential once again, chairing meetings and setting agendas.

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Poland is back in the European mainstream. It’s where Mr Tusk would like the UK to be as well.

It’s where, privately, Sir Keir would like the UK to be. It’s just that with Reform UK almost neck and neck with Labour in the polls, he daren’t say so.

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Polish PM says he ‘dreams’ of a ‘Breturn’ as UK seeks new defence pact with ally

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Polish PM says he 'dreams' of a 'Breturn' as UK seeks new defence pact with ally

Poland’s prime minister has said he hopes for the “Breturn” of the UK as a member of the European Union – as he discussed a defence treaty with Sir Keir Starmer.

Donald Tusk, who was hosting the prime minister for discussions on a UK-Polish defence pact in Warsaw, said it was his “dream” that “instead of a Brexit, we will have a Breturn”.

Standing alongside Sir Keir at a joint news conference, the Polish premier also said he had discussed greater cooperation between the UK and the EU.

Mr Tusk, who was the president of the European Council during the years that Britain left the EU, said: “For obvious reasons, we also discussed another issue, the cooperation between Great Britain and the European Union.

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“I’m sure you will recall when we learned about the results of the Brexit referendum. I was head of the European Council… at that time. My first emotional reaction was to say: ‘I already miss you.’

“I remember our press briefings as if it was yesterday. I already miss you, that’s what I said.”

He added: “This is not just about emotions and sentiments – I am aware this is a dream of mine, that instead of a Brexit we will have a Breturn.

“Perhaps I’m labouring under an illusion. I’d rather be an optimist and harbour these dreams in my heart – sometimes they come true in politics.”

Sir Keir, who held the role of shadow Brexit secretary while Labour was in opposition and backed remain in the 2016 referendum, has repeatedly ruled out rejoining the customs union or single market.

He has, however, said he wants to deepen post-Brexit ties with Brussels

Mr Tusk was speaking after Sir Keir travelled to Poland to discuss a defence pact with the NATO ally – which Mr Tusk said he hoped would be ratified “this year”.

The new treaty is designed to protect Europe from Russian aggression, tackle people-smuggling gangs, and combat misinformation and cyber threats.

Sir Keir was also asked whether the UK’s attendance at a defence summit in Poland earlier this week meant he was in favour of “creating an army” for Europe – to which he replied he was not.

Asked about the E5 defence ministers meeting in Warsaw and whether he supported creating a common European army, Sir Keir said: “The meeting that happened the other day is vitally important. That isn’t about creating armies.

“It’s about how we share our security concerns and build on what we’ve already got.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria Starmer visit the Memorial And Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, a former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, in Oswiecim, Poland January 17, 2025. REUTERS/Aleksandra Szmigiel
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Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria Starmer visit the Memorial And Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. Pic: Reuters

As part of the defence pact, a £4bn partnership for new air defence systems in Poland has been agreed. The project will be headquartered in Bristol.

“The UK has secured £8bn of defence deals in Poland over the last three years alone, and we’re going further today, opening a new joint programme office in Bristol to deliver our £4bn partnership, to deliver the next generation of air defence systems to Poland,” he said.

He added: “We share an unbreakable commitment to NATO and an unbreakable commitment to Ukraine.”

During his visit to Poland, Sir Keir also made his first visit to Auschwitz, which he described as “utterly harrowing”.

The prime minister visited the former Nazi concentration camp, where he laid a wreath ahead of the 80th anniversary of its liberation.

After he and his wife Victoria, who is Jewish, visited the site, Sir Keir said: “Nothing could prepare me for the sheer horror of what I have seen in this place. It is utterly harrowing.

“The mounds of hair, the shoes, the suitcases, the names and details, everything that was so meticulously kept, except for human life.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria Starmer visit the Memorial And Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, a former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, in Oswiecim, Poland January 17, 2025. REUTERS/Aleksandra Szmigiel
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Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria Starmer visit the Memorial And Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. Pic: Reuters

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His visit to Poland came following a surprise trip to Kyiv on Thursday, where he reiterated his support for Ukraine and suggested that British troops could be deployed to the country as part of peacekeeping efforts.

In an exclusive interview with Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby, Sir Keir said the UK would play its “full part” in any peace negotiations – including by deploying British troops for peacekeeping – though added that he did not want “to get ahead of ourselves”.

During his visit, Sir Keir also met Polish businesses, including the firm InPost which has announced it will invest a further £600m into the UK in the next five years to grow its operations.

It is thought that the overall £1bn investment by the firm, which operates parcel lockers, could support up to 12,000 new jobs.

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