Category Archives: Kemi Badenoch

Kemi Badenoch co-wrote report saying Prevent scheme could ‘alienate communities’

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Tory leader backed 2015 inquiry but has now criticised Labour for having same concerns about counter-terror strategy

Kemi Badenoch, who criticised a Labour manifesto that warned the UK’s Prevent programme could alienate communities, co-authored a report which expressed concern that the same anti-radicalisation scheme was alienating communities.

The Conservative party leader backed an inquiry in 2015 that concluded “the public must not be the forgotten partner in the fight against extremism” and noted that Prevent was “subject to accusations of police heavy-handedness”.

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PMQs live: Starmer to face Badenoch after announcing plan to end teenage access to knives online in wake of Southport attack

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PM to face Tory leader following decision to announce tougher checks for people buying knives online

A new online train ticket retailer backed by the UK government is to be created, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced, with the aim of simplifying the process of buying tickets from different rail operators. Joanna Partridge has the story.

PMQs is almost with us.

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KemiKaze’s ‘relaunch’ speech reveals a Tory leader already out of ideas | John Crace

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Kemi Badenoch says she’s sorry not sorry for the mess left by 14 years of the Tories, but offers no clue of how to dig us out of it

Seeing is not always believing. Fair to say that Kemi Badenoch’s time as leader of the Tory party has not got off to the best of starts. Hopeless at prime minister’s questions and seemingly already out of ideas, many in the party are already looking around for possible successors. Even Robert Jenrick. Things really are that desperate.

Even so, 10 weeks in feels a little premature for a relaunch. If that’s what it was. Hard to know really as no one was much the wiser after Kemi had finished what had been billed as an “important” speech at the Institute of Directors in central London. No one does pointlessness quite like KemiKaze. She is the queen of futility.

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Starmer accuses Tories of being ‘economic vandals’ at PMQs as Badenoch challenges him to rule out tax rises – UK politics live

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Prime minister says global economy experiencing volatility after Conservative leader attacks him over economy

The Mauritian government said talks will continue on the Chagos Islands deal, with attorney general Gavin Glover set to return to the UK for further negotiations, PA Media reports.

A statement issued following a meeting of prime minister Navin Ramgoolam’s cabinet said:

The commitment and resolve of Mauritius to reach an agreement and end this long battle for the sovereignty of Mauritius over the Chagos Archipelago remains unshaken.

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Tories back Badenoch’s ‘risky’ call for grooming gangs inquiry

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Keir Starmer accuses opposition leader of spending ‘a lot of time on social media over Christmas’

When Kemi Badenoch used prime minister’s questions this week to echo Elon Musk’s demands for a new inquiry into sexual grooming gangs, the MPs behind her were trying to interpret the intentions of their fledgling leader. Was it a long-held view? A short-term move to wrong-foot Labour or appeal to Reform voters? A sign she was adopting a more radical politics?

There was one point, however, that seemed to unite those with differing theories about their leader’s motives. Her decision to warn Keir Starmer that refusing a fresh inquiry could prompt speculation about a “cover-up” was the kind of political gamble they had expected her to be willing to take.

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Tory and Reform MPs accused of ‘weaponising trauma’ of grooming victims, as Farage calls for inquiry into Pakistani men – UK politics live

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Prime minister told Commons any new inquiry into child abuse would delay progress however spokesperson says he has not ruled one out

Reform UK has also tabled a reasoned amendment to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill motion tonight. It says:

That this house declines to give a second reading to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill because the secretary of state for the Home Department has not launched a UK-wide public inquiry into grooming gangs and has not committed to updating Members of this House every quarter on the progress of the inquiry.

The Conservatives are using the victims of this scandal as a political football.

The Conservatives alongside Reform, goaded along by Elon Musk will be voting for a motion which will not secure a national inquiry for victims of child sexual abuse, but instead it would kill these crucial child protection measures completely.

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Lib Dems call for Kemi Badenoch to sack Robert Jenrick over ‘divisive comments’

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Shadow justice minister backs up previous remarks on immigration by telling BBC ‘not all cultures are equal’

The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, should sack Robert Jenrick for “divisive comments,” the Lib Dems have said, after the shadow justice minister doubled down on his comments about immigrants with “alien cultures”.

Jenrick was challenged repeatedly on Tuesday morning for having failed to act on the outcome of an inquiry into grooming gangs while he was in the Home Office, despite now demanding one, and for rarely mentioning the issue in the House of Commons until this year.

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Nigel Farage ‘very pleased’ Elon Musk backs Reform UK, calling him a ‘hero’

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Speaking at party conference, its leader calls reports of tech mogul’s potential $100m donation ‘somewhat overexaggerated’

Nigel Farage has hailed Elon Musk as a “hero” and said he was “very pleased he’s backing our party”, but he called reports that the tech mogul was preparing to donate $100m (£80m) to Reform UK “somewhat overexaggerated”.

Speaking at Reform’s East Midlands conference on Friday night, the party leader said Musk’s efficiency plan for Donald Trump’s government was the “blueprint we need” as he called for a “complete change of culture in Britain”.

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Wes Streeting defends pace of plans for adult social care reform – UK politics live

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Health secretary says initial reports from commission led by Louise Casey will come next year

As well as being asked about plans for adult social care and a new national care service, Wes Streeting was questioned this morning on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme about progress on assisted dying legislation in England and Wales.

As health secretary, Streeting intervened before November’s vote, suggesting that legalising assisted dying in the two countries would have resource implications for the NHS, and might lead to healthcare cuts.

The bill committee will work through those policy issues before the bill comes back to the Commons as a whole for further amendment, and then a final vote on a third reading before it goes to the Lords.

So whatever my misgivings, I’ve said all the way through this that I’ve respected parliament, that this isn’t the government’s responsibility, the government is neutral. That is for the Commons and the Lords to decide.

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Starmer condemns Badenoch for abandoning cross-party consensus on climate crisis policy – UK politics live

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Prime minister says Tory leader’s attacks on climate targets diminishes government ability to tackle central issue

British prime minister Keir Starmer says he is “deeply saddened” to hear that Prescott has died, and called him a “true giant of Labour”.

In a statement on X, he said, “I am deeply saddened to hear of the death of John Prescott. John was a true giant of the Labour movement. On behalf of the Labour Party, I send my condolences to Pauline and his family, to the city of Hull, and to all those who knew and loved him. May he rest in peace.”

He possessed an inherent ability to connect with people about the issues that mattered to them – a talent that others spend years studying and cultivating, but that was second nature to him.

He fought like hell to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol and was an unwavering champion of climate action for decades to come. I’m forever grateful to John for that commitment to solving the climate crisis and will miss him as a dear friend.”

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Essex police defend their investigation of Allison Pearson tweet

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Force says Telegraph writer accused of inciting racial hatred, rather than committing a non-crime hate incident as she had claimed

Essex police have defended their decision to investigate the Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson over a social media post, saying she is accused of “inciting racial hatred” not of committing a “non-crime hate incident”, as she had claimed.

The row over Pearson’s tweet has been splashed across the front pages of the Times, Telegraph and Mail this week. Leading figures on the right, including the new leader of the Conservative party, Kemi Badenoch, and the former prime minister Boris Johnson, have leapt to her defence.

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Pay for NHS chiefs to be linked to performance with ‘no more rewards for failure’, Wes Streeting says – as it happened

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This live blog is closed

Here are some of the main points from Jonathan Reynolds’s evidence to the Post Office inquiry so far this morning.

Reynolds said he accepted as business secretary he was responsible for ensuring the compensation scheme operated properly. He said in the past there had been “insufficient accountability”.

He said that since the general election there has been a “significant increase” in the pace at which compensation is being paid. The journalist Nick Wallis (who wrote a superb book, The Great Post Office Scandal) is live tweeting from the inquiry, and he quotes Reynolds as saying:

Since the general election there has been a significant increase in the pace at which compensation has been paid. The overall quantum of compensation is up in the last four months by roughly a third and the number of claims to which there has been an initial... offer being made in response to that claim has roughly doubled in the last four months [to] what it has been in the four months preceding the general election.

Home Office officials do not believe Labour’s plan to “smash the gangs” will work as a way of bringing down illegal migration to the UK, i can reveal.

They say that civil servants in the department have been “underwhelmed” by the approach that was being outlined again this week by Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.

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No 10 believes it has done its homework for a Trump presidency

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Keir Starmer’s team expected a Trump win and has long been building bridges despite political differences

While Kemi Badenoch was the first politician since the US presidential election result to publicly challenge Keir Starmer over Labour’s previously tense relationship with Donald Trump, she is unlikely to be the last.

Yet the UK prime minister, according to government sources, is less anxious about the return of the divisive populist to the White House than the new Tory leader, and many in his own party, might have assumed.

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Starmer and Badenoch congratulate Trump on ‘historic election victory’ – UK politics live

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Both PM and leader of the opposition offer congratulations with more full-throated support from Tory rightwingers such as Truss and Braverman

Another Labour politician who has criticised Donald Trump strongly in the past is Emily Thornberry, shadow foreign secretary when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader and now chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee. In an interview on the Today programme this morning she said Trump’s victory (or apparent victory – he still has not officially hit 270 electoral college votes) was “disappointing”, and that it made the world “unpredictable”.

When it was put to her that she described him as a “racist, sexual predator” when he visited the UK during his first term as president, she replied:

Well, he is. But he is the president of the United States, and we need to work with him.

I know that many Londoners will be anxious about the outcome of the US presidential election. Many will be fearful about what it will mean for democracy and for women’s rights, or how the result impacts the situation in the Middle East or the fate of Ukraine. Others will be worried about the future of NATO or tackling the climate crisis …

The lesson of today is that progress is not inevitable. But asserting our progressive values is more important than ever - re-committing to building a world where racism and hatred is rejected, the fundamental rights of women and girls are upheld, and where we continue to tackle the crisis of climate change head on.

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Senior Tories urge Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick to settle differences

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Leader names rival in shadow cabinet but announcement marred by leaks suggesting Jenrick wanted bigger job

Senior Conservatives have urged Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick to rapidly settle any differences after the unveiling of the full shadow cabinet was marred by briefings and concern over lingering rivalries.

Badenoch, who became leader after defeating Jenrick in a vote of Tory members, held her first shadow cabinet meeting on Tuesday, having named a team including three rival candidates, Jenrick among them, and a series of party centrists.

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Starmer says people smuggling should be seen as ‘global security threat similar to terrorism’ – UK politics live

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PM gave speech at Glasgow’s Interpol general assembly as Kemi Badenoch works on shadow cabinet appointments

Starmer went on to say the government was “going to treat people smugglers like terrorists”. And he explained what that meant.

So we’re taking our approach to counter terrorism, which we know works, and apply it to the gangs with our new Border Security Command.

We’re ending the fragmentation between policing, Border Force and our intelligence agencies, recruiting hundreds of specialist investigators, the best of the best, from our National Crime Agency, Border Force, immigration enforcement and the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] and our intelligence agencies, all working together.

We have the powers to trace suspects’ movements using information from the intelligence services.

We can shut down their bank accounts, cut off their internet access, and arrest them for making preparations to act before an attack has taken place.

I will work with anyone serious who could offer solutions of this, anyone, because without coordinated global action, it will not go away.

And unless we bring all the powers we have to bear on this in much the same way as we do for terrorism, then we will struggle to bring these criminals to justice.

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Senior Labour MPs frustrated at lack of Black officials in No 10

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Exclusive: one frontbencher said the absence was a ‘serious embarrassment and a blind spot’ as Tories elect first Black leader

Senior Labour MPs have expressed their frustration at the lack of Black representation in No 10 as the Conservatives elected Kemi Badenoch as their new leader.

Labour sources said the WhatsApp group for Labour MPs of colour contained some furious messages from those who believe the party is not doing enough to represent Black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups at the top of government.

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Covid bereaved angered by Badenoch’s ‘insulting’ Partygate remarks

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Families group calls Tory leader ‘deeply misguided’ after telling BBC that Boris Johnson-era scandal was ‘overblown’

Families bereaved by the Covid pandemic say they feel insulted by Kemi Badenoch’s claim that the Partygate scandal was “overblown”.

The new Conservative party leader also told the BBC that Boris Johnson had fallen into a “trap” of breaking lockdown rules that should never have been introduced.

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Kemi Badenoch says Partygate scandal was ‘overblown’

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New Tory leader calls Boris Johnson a ‘great prime minister’ who fell into a ‘trap’ over Covid rules

The new Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has said the Partygate scandal was “overblown” as she rejected the need to “churn over” everything that went wrong with previous Tory prime ministers.

Badenoch won the party leadership on Saturday and said she was going to be “honest” about what went wrong in the party under her predecessors.

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Labour challenges Badenoch to back billions for public services and tax rises

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Rachel Reeves throws down budget gauntlet to new Tory chief as party’s first black leader is congratulated on win

Labour has thrown down an immediate challenge to the new Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, to back Rachel Reeves’s budget plans for big increases in tax, spending and borrowing, as a huge political divide threatened to open up over economic policy and the future of public services.

All the main party leaders congratulated Badenoch on Saturday on becoming the first black leader of a main UK party after she stormed to victory over former immigration minister Robert Jenrick with 56.5% of the vote among Conservative party members.

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