Kemi Badenoch today refused to comment on The Spectator’s scoop that Grant Shapps has been savagely rejected as a Tory candidate at the next election. However, all but confirming the story, the Conservative leader was at pains to insist that she is building a ‘new and different’ party in her own image…
At a sun-soaked press conference on a central London rooftop, Badenoch told reporters:
You wouldn’t expect me to be commenting on anybody’s application for candidates – and to be speculating about rumours. What I will say right now is that the conservative party is a serious party. We don’t treat our former MPs or our candidates like tittle tattle for a Westminster gossip – we treat people better than that… What I will say is that we’re going to be announcing candidates shortly and you will see that this is a very different party from the one that was removed from government in 2024. We have got a plan and everyone is focused on delivering for the country. That is what I want people to see: that this is a new and different conservative party.
Badenoch also hammered home her warning that Andy Burnham’s ‘spending spree’ is a siren sounding for yet more tax rises. She urged the Prime Minister to rule out further hikes to fund his cost of living interventions, warning: ‘Rachel Reeves raised taxes and we saw what happened after that. Employers stopped hiring and jobs were lost. Andy Burnham will repeat Rachel Reeves’s mistakes if he raises taxes again.’
Following today’s announcement of a 20 per cent tax cut for pubs and clubs, Badenoch vowed that a Tory government would abolish business rates altogether. She also claimed Burnham’s mixed messaging over whether he planned to raise the income tax threshold showed that he ‘doesn’t actually know what he wants to do’.
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