Badenoch disowns her own party’s claim that proposed missile defence plan amounts to ‘British Iron Dome’
Kemi Badenoch is now on GB News.
Talking about the Tory plans for a “Britannia Shield”, she says:
It is not an Iron Dome like what Israel has. It is not something used to cover the entire country.
This is her final interview from the morning round, and it ends with Badenoch, even more firmly then before, quashing the line that the Conservatives were using in a news release (see 7.59am) sent out less than 24 hours ago.
Key events
Badenoch says she is seeking tips for Tories from how ‘heritage brands’ recover from mistakes
In her interview on Times Radio earlier, Kemi Badenoch said she had been reading about how some “heritage brands” recovered after losing their reputation for tips that might help the Tories.
She said:
I’ve been reading a lot about heritage brands that lost their way. And it always happens when the brand stops looking after its core customers and starts doing things that are off-brand. And it takes some time to recover from that.
But that is what I’m doing. Refreshing the brand. I’m glad that I’m doing well. I know that people have started listening to the Conservative party again. I want them to start buying.
Q: What do you think of the US pulling out of RAF Fairford?
Badenoch says this is very serious.
The UK needs to take defence more seriously.
Q: How worried are you about the party’s polling?
Badenoch says she wants people to know the party is under new management.
Q: Are you ready for an election?
Badenoch says there is a difference between being ready for an election and ready for government. She is ready for both, she claims.
Kemi Badenoch is now on LBC.
Nick Ferrari is asking how many missile defence units there would be.
Badenoch says she cannot give Ferrari the technical details. She says he should speak to James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary.
Q: But did you not ask how many units would be needed?
Badenoch says she focused on outcomes.
She says Cartlidge, a former defence procurement minister, is across the detail.
Q: Why should people trust the Tories with something like this when they could not deliver HS2?
Badenoch says her booklet, The Right Way, addresses what went wrong with government procurement under the Tories.
Badenoch says it is wrong to say black people can’t be English – but declines to criticise Suella Braverman over this
Balls asks Badenoch about Suella Braverman telling ITV last week that she never considers herself of English ethnicity.
Q: How do you feel about that?
Badenoch says she does not understand why people are policing others’ identity.
I don’t understand why all of a sudden some people are policing other people’s identity?
I think identity is something very personal. If that’s how [Braverman] feels about herself, I think that’s fine.
But what I’m worried about is politicians running around telling some people that they’re not English.
I remember when I was younger watching English footballers, black and white. I can’t imagine people pointing to the black footballers and saying, ‘Well, you’re not really, really English.’
I think we need we need to be very careful with this, sort of conversation.
She says, on gender, she thinks men are men and women are different.
But identity is different. Her children are half white, half black.
Q: But isn’t Braverman saying that black footballers playing for England are not English?
Badenoch says Braverman must speak for herself. She says she personally would not say those footballers are not English.
Q: Do you think Kemi Badenoch would be welcome as a migrant to the UK today?
Badenoch says when she was born in England in 1980 thinks were very different. Two years later the rules were changed. (Badenoch gave British citizenship because she was born in the country, but that rule changed.”
Ed Balls and Susanna Reid are presenting.
Q: Will you cut inheritance tax? You have called it immoral.
Badenoch says she has called it too high. But she won’t announce cuts until she has found the money to fund them.
She was very moved by what farmers told her about the impact of inheritance tax, she says.
Q: So you might cut it, rather than abolish it. Or raise the threshold at which it is paid. The government is expected to raise £15bn from it by 2030.
Badenoch says she does not accept all those figures.
She says the country is getting poorer. She says she was surprised Andy Burnham did not talk about the economy in his speech.
Kemi Badenoch is now on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Talking about Jeffrey Archer, she mentions again the text she got from him yesterday. She says that he often texted in the morning when he was reading the papers. She says he always ended his texts “NRN” – no reply needed.
Badenoch says Jeffrey Archer ‘made me laugh’, and she will ‘miss him very much’
Badenoch recalls again getting a text message from Jeffrey Archer yesterday.
She says he was one of the people who supported her even before she became leader. She says the people like that are the people she treasures most.
He always had a funny story and sometimes – it’s a shame, because he had disappearing messages on – when he felt people were being critical of me, he’d say quite rude things about [them], which made me which made me laugh.
I’m going to miss him very much.
Asked about his legacy, Badenoch says:
I think his legacy is more in his writing, probably, than in Conservative politics.
He was part of the Conservative family. We were a very fond of him.
I think we wish he was better behaved. I think his family probably felt the impact of that more than more than we did.
But it was a sign that he was someone who people liked so much that, even after he’d been in tricky situations, he kept being given further chances.
Q: Do you agree with Jeffrey Archer that politics has become too tribal?
Badenoch says politics is very tribal now. People live in echo chambers.
But she says she thinks people can unite around common sense.
Q: People don’t agree with you on welfare cuts?
Badenoch says the UK is not a country of welfare. People believe in work. The Conservatives are for people who think that, she says.
She says the Tories won in Aberdeen South by attracting voters who were not natural Conservatives.
Q: Are you ruling out coalitions?
Badenoch says the problems of the last government started with the coalition. People had voted Conservative, but they did not get a Conservative government.
She says she wants to ensure that does not happen again.
Reform UK peopl are “not our kind of people”, she says. She says they don’t have high standards.
Q: What would you do in the event of a hung parliament? Would you work with Reform UK?
Badenoch says he does not accept the premise of the question. It is not about uniting the right. It is about uniting the country, she says.
She says even the trade unions agree with her about drilling in the North Sea.
Badenoch says Andy Burnham is not taking tough decisions.
Q: You say he should call an election. But you are polling even lower than you were in 2024. If there is an election now, you won’t be able to turn it round.
Badenoch says people look at who the leader is.
Winning the election is the start, not the end, she says.
She says Labour took office but did not know what it wanted to do. She won’t do that, she says.
She says she has a strong team, a plan, and it’s “all about common sense”.
Q: You are more popular in the polls than your party? Why has that not helped your party?
Badenoch says people still blame the party for what the last government did. She claims people know who is in her shadow cabinet.
Q: Do they?
They do, Badenoch insists.
Badenoch blames papers for describing what Tories called ‘Iron Dome’ plan as an ‘Iron Dome’
Kemi Badenoch is on the Today programme now. Anna Foster is interviewing.
Foster starts by asking about the “Britannia Shield”. Badenoch says that is what they have called it. Foster says in the press released they referred to it as a version of an Iron Dome.
Badenoch says what they are proposing is not like the Israeli version.
Q: £1bn a year won’t get you anywhere close to what you are suggesting here?
Badenoch says they are designing something for the UK.
Q: So why call it the Iron Dome?
Badenoch says Foster will have to ask the papers about that. She says the Tories are calling it a Britannia Shield.
Asked about cutting inheritance tax, Badenoch told Times Radio:
Even though I want to cut inheritance tax – I’ve given speeches about how I think it is a very bad tax – I’ve been particularly influenced by what we’ve seen over the last couple of years, farmers taking their lives because of them …
But we have to find the money to pay for it. What we’re not doing is just cutting taxes willy nilly. We need to find the savings.
Badenoch complains interviewer ‘splitting hairs’ when asked if all UK, or just infrastructure, protected by ‘Britannia Shield’
On the missile defence plan, McCann asked Badenoch if this was about protecting the whole of the UK, or just protecting critical infrastructure.
Badenoch replied:
I think you are splitting hairs here.
Critical national infrastructure protects the entire country. If we lose even one thing, the entire country is in, is in a real problem.
I don’t want to have a semantic argument. I have put out a description of something which should protect our country and which should make us safer.
