Kemi Badenoch will be “defined” by the first “clanger” she makes as Tory leader, Baroness Davidson has said.

The Tory peer said Ms Badenoch, who replaced Rishi Sunak earlier this month, had to be “humble and work bloody hard” in her role following the Conservatives’ worst-ever general election performance.

Speaking to Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Baroness Davidson criticised the Tory leader for choosing to give a speech at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) on the impact of Labour’s decision to increase employers’ national insurance contributions in the budget.

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During the speech, Ms Badenoch refused to say whether she would reverse the national insurance hike – despite calling it a “tax on jobs”.

Baroness Davidson told Rigby: “If I was in charge of the UK Tory party right now, if I wanted to do a business speech, I wouldn’t have done it at the CBI.

“I would have done it at the Federation of Small Businesses – the people that are most affected by this national insurance change.

“I would have been damn sure what my policy was going to be and what it was that I was going to be able to tell them.”

The Tory peer, who led the Scottish Conservatives from 2011 to 2019, said the job of an Opposition leader was to “go out and hustle” for votes.

She added: “It’s to speak to people… it’s to apologise for the stuff we got wrong, it’s to show people that we’ve changed, and it’s to start putting together slowly, bit by bit, a policy platform that can lead us into the next election in five years’ time.”

Baroness Davidson said there had been “so many open goals” for Ms Badenoch to take against the prime minister, including over his decision to scrap winter fuel payments for the majority of pensioners.

“Why is she not going off and speaking to pensioners?” Baroness Davidson said.

“We’ve got great stories to tell [on the winter fuel allowance]. Now, as we’re coming into this cold snap, she could have been doing something about that.”

She added: “She can’t be high-handed about this and she can’t be lazy. She has to be humble and she has to work bloody hard!”

Asked whether she thought Ms Badenoch was “lazy”, Baroness Davidson said: “I don’t know what her personal tempo of operations is and how she runs her office, she might be doing tonnes of things that we’re not seeing, but there’s a problem in that. We’re not seeing them.

“There is a massive klaxon going off in my head here because if Labour have worked out that she’s not defining herself, it doesn’t take an awful lot of steps to decide, ‘Well, we can define her ourselves’.

“And it will not be in a way that is helpful to the Conservative Party. They’ll wait for the first clanger and the first clanger is what will define her.”

Dame Prue Leith believes her son would have a “different attitude” towards assisted dying had he watched his uncle or father die – as she did.

The broadcaster, best known for The Great British Bake Off, urged members to “vote for change” as the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is set to be debated in the Commons.

MPs will take part in a free vote on the proposed law, which would make it legal for over-18s who are terminally ill to be given medical assistance to end their own life in England and Wales.

Politics Live: Top Tory says it’s a ‘day of shame’ for his party

Dame Prue told the Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge that she hadn’t given much thought to assisted dying until the death of her brother David, who she witnessed “screaming in agony” towards the end of his life.

However, her son Danny Kruger – the shadow work and pensions minister – told Sky News previously that it is “impossible” for the assisted dying bill tabled by Labour’s Kim Leadbeater to be “tight enough”.

He said if the UK had “top quality palliative care”, nobody would need the option of assisted dying.

But Dame Prue believes her son “would have a different attitude” had he seen “his uncle die or his father die”.

Asked if she and Mr Kruger argue about the topic, the broadcaster said: “We mostly don’t get into it.

“It always just gets into the long discussion, which is never bad tempered I must say, you know, because we are very fond of each other.”

The Bake Off favourite told Sophy Ridge that she is strongly in favour of assisted dying due to the death of her brother, who she witnessed in “screaming agony” at the end of his life.

David was in his 60s when he died as a result of bone cancer, and Dame Prue recalled the heartbreaking moments she witnessed before his death.

She said: “The morphine would work for a couple of hours, but then it would fail and you wouldn’t get another dose.

“They only did it every four hours. And so he was really first crying, whimpering, moaning, then crying, then screaming, and then absolutely desperate.

“And the rest of the ward have to suffer it. The nurses have to suffer. His family have to suffer it.”

Dame Prue said David was “begging for somebody to help him”.

“He would say things like, ‘if I was a dog, if I was a horse, you would do the right thing by me, you’d put me down.'”

She is urging MPs to “vote for a change” in the law, because “there’s no question the current law is not working”.

MPs will on Friday decide whether or not to back assisted dying. The proposed law would make it legal for over-18s who are terminally ill to be given medical assistance to end their own life in England and Wales.

The bill sets out detailed requirements in order to be eligible.

The Labour MP proposing it, Ms Leadbeater, says the safeguards are the “most robust” in the world, but others argue it is a “slippery slope towards death on demand”.