Conservative leadership race: Kemi Badenoch says Tories ‘talked right but governed left’ as James Cleverly vows to resurrect Rwanda scheme

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2 months ago

September 2, 2024

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Two Tory leadership hopeful frontrunners have made their pitch to members and MPs ahead of candidates being whittled down this week.

Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly launched their campaigns today before the first round of voting on Wednesday, when six candidates will become four.

Ms Badenoch took aim at the Conservative government she was part of as she said it “talked right but governed left”, while presenting herself as the only person who could be brutally honest.

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Mr Cleverly focused on his experience in government – as home and foreign secretary – as he promised to bring back the Rwanda policy and raise defence spending to 3% of GDP.

Former business secretary Ms Badenoch, the bookmakers’ favourite to replace Rishi Sunak, said “a government that tried to do everything will likely end up achieving nothing”.

“This was one of our mistakes,” she said.

“We talked right but governed left, sounding like Conservatives but acting like Labour.

“Government should do fewer things, but what it does, it should do with brilliance.”

She said Labour are only in government because people no longer believed in the Conservatives, and “trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public” about the UK’s finances.

“The British people are yearning for something better, and this Labour government is not it,” she said.

“They are already making worse mistakes than we did.”

Ms Badenoch said her principles included personal responsibility, truth, the family, equality under the law and citizenship.

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She also said as a former engineer she knows how to “get things done” and can “accept reality” while politicians “pretend we can have everything, they make promises we cannot keep”.

And she sought to dispel criticism she was only concerned with culture wars, saying as equalities minister she had to look after “very, very tricky issues like race and gender”.

“I didn’t run away. And not only did I not run away, I defended people who needed help, and I dragged Labour onto our turf,” she said.

Mr Cleverly’s pitch to MPs and members lay firmly on his experience as he pledged to “resurrect” the Rwanda scheme for illegal migrants – scrapped by Labour – if he becomes prime minister.

Avoiding criticising the government he helped lead, he said for the Conservative Party to get back on track people need to see it “focused on them, not just focused on ourselves”.

“The parliamentary party needs to lead by example,” he said.

“We must be unified, we must be disciplined – and unity is not the easy option, it is the harder option.”

To much applause, he announced he would commit to spending 3% of GDP on defence.

“You cannot penny-pinch your way to peace,” the former minister said.

The shadow home secretary concluded: “I know that our best years can be ahead of us, but only if we replace this useless Labour government.”

The six Conservative leader candidates are:

James Cleverly
Robert Jenrick
Tom Tugendhat
Mel Stride
Kemi Badenoch
Priti Patel

A new leader is expected to be selected in November.

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NY Supreme Court allows Greenidge to keep mining, but challenges remain

Published

1 hour ago

November 15, 2024

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NY Supreme Court allows Greenidge to keep mining, but challenges remain

The state Department of Environmental Conservation botched the permitting process, but it still gets a do-over.

UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September – slower than expected

Published

1 hour ago

November 15, 2024

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UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September - slower than expected

The UK economy grew by 0.1% between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

However, despite the small positive GDP growth recorded in the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, dragging down overall growth for the three month period.

The growth was also slower than what had been expected by experts and a drop from the 0.5% growth between April and June, the ONS said.

Economists polled by Reuters and the Bank of England had forecast an expansion of 0.2%, slowing from the rapid growth seen over the first half of 2024 when the economy was rebounding from last year’s shallow recession.

And the metric that Labour has said it is most focused on – the GDP per capita, or the economic output divided by the number of people in the country – also fell by 0.1%.

Reacting to the figures, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Am I satisfied with the numbers published today? Of course not. I want growth to be stronger, to come sooner, and also to be felt by families right across the country.”

“It’s why in my Mansion House speech last night, I announced some of the biggest reforms of our pension system in a generation to unlock long term patient capital, up to £80bn to help invest in small businesses and scale up businesses and in the infrastructure needs,” Ms Reeves later told Sky News in an interview.

“We’re four months into this government. There’s a lot more to do to turn around the growth performance of the last decade or so.”

New economy data tests chancellor’s growth plan

The sluggish services sector – which makes up the bulk of the British economy – was a particular drag on growth over the past three months. It expanded by 0.1%, cancelling out the 0.8% growth in the construction sector.

The UK’s GDP for the most recent quarter is lower than the 0.7% growth in the US and 0.4% in the Eurozone.

The figures have pushed the UK towards the bottom of the G7 growth table for the third quarter of the year.

It was expected to meet the same 0.2% growth figures reported in Germany and Japan – but fell below that after a slow September.

The pound remained stable following the news, hovering around $1.267. The FTSE 100, meanwhile, opened the day down by 0.4%.

The Bank of England last week predicted that Ms Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.

Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.

The Bank’s quarterly report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.