Badenoch dismisses Jake Berry as ‘banana republic’ opportunist after his defection to Reform – UK politics live | Politics
Badenoch dismisses Jake Berry as ‘banana republic’ opportunist after his defection to Reform
Q: Does it worry you that ambitious politicians on the right think they have to join Reform UK to get on?
Badenoch said there are a lot of people who come into politics “just to play the game of politics”. They follow the polls, and defect, she said. She was different, she suggested. She said she was working on a proper plan for government.
UPDATE: Badenoch said:
This is something which I say again and again, that there are a lot of people who come into politics just to play the game of politics. And they will follow polls and defect wherever they can, like they do in banana republics, to wherever they think that they can win.
We have to do more than win. We have to be ready with a plan. This is what Labour got wrong. They had no plan. They were just focused on the election, and now they’re in government, and they’re completely at sea, they cannot deliver anything.
All of the people who are not interested in coming up with a proper policy plan and just want to jump ship are welcome to do so, because when the time comes, at the next general election, the public are going to be looking for a serious, credible alternative. We are the only serious, credible alternative.
Key events
Starmer and Macron urge allies to step up ‘pressure’ on Putin
Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron called for more pressure in the form of fresh sanctions against Moscow to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine, Jakub Krupa reports on his Europe live blog.
The Starmer/Macron press conference is now due to start at 4pm.
I will be covering it here, but Jakub will also be covering European angles, particularly relating to Ukraine and the coalition of the willing.
With Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron set to announce a ‘one in, one out’ migration deal, the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has decided to spend the day on a boat in the Channel. He posted this on X.
And this is what he told GB News:
This is a classic day in the English Channel over the last five years when the weather’s calm, or a red day, as they call it.
You’ve got a migrant boat and we’ve seen it through the binoculars.
There’s about 70 people on board, being escorted, all the way over by the French Navy and behind us, we have Border Force sitting on the 12-mile line, waiting for the handover.
Starmer says European ‘coalition of willing’ plans to help Ukraine in event of ceasefire now ‘mature’
Keir Starmer has said that European plans for a peacekeeping force to aid Ukraine once the war ends are now “mature” after months of planning.
Speaking at the Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM) centre in Northwood, London, during a call with allies who make up the “coalition of the willing”, Starmer said:
I am very pleased to say today that these plans are mature and we are putting them on a long-term footing.
He also said what was important now for the coalition was “making sure that our focus is on ensuring Ukraine is in the strongest possible position” in the event of a ceasefire.
New headquarters for the coalition are to be based in Paris, he added.
And Emmanuel Macron, who is with Starmer, told the gathered allies: “We have a plan that is ready to go and initiate in the hours after a ceasefire.”
Sitting alongside Starmer was defence secretary John Healey, national security adviser Jonathan Powell, and Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, chief of the defence staff.
Macron was joined by Healey’s French counterpart Sebastien Lecornu, and high ranking officials.
Iran’s threat to UK on a par with Russia’s, security report finds
Iran’s intimidation, including the fear of physical attack and assassination of Iranian dissidents living in the UK, is comparable in scale to the threat posed by Russia, parliament’s intelligence and security committee has found. Patrick Wintour has the story.
Labour criticises Badenoch for not saying Tories would definitely keep pensions triple lock
During her Q&A Kemi Badenoch said that it was Tory policy to support the triple lock for pensions. (See 12.51pm.) But she also said she was focusing on policy “right now”, and she did not say it would still be Conservative policy by the time of the next election.
Labour claims this means the Tories want to cut pensions. In a news release, a party spokesperson said:
Kemi Badenoch has put pensioners on notice: the Tories want to slash the state pension for 11 million people.
The Tory leader has repeatedly refused to commit to the triple lock and has talked up means testing pensions. This simply means less money in the pockets of retirees is now Tory policy. Pensions are not safe with the Tories.
In its recent fiscal sustainabiltiy report, the Office for Budget Responsibility said the triple lock policy – which says the state pension should go up every year in line with earnings, inflation or by 2.5%, whichever is biggest – will be costing £15.5bn a year by 2029-30, three times as much as expected when it was introduced in 2012. The OBR said if this continued over the next 50 years, the policy would end up costing £43bn a year in 2024-25 prices).
Ross Greer announces bid to become co-leader of Scottish Greens
Severin Carrell
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
Ross Greer, a prominent Scottish Greens MSP who cut his teeth in the Scottish independence campaign in 2014, has announced he is standing to be party co-leader, with a pledge to introduce free universal bus travel.
The Scottish Green party, which currently holds seven seats at Holyrood, placing it fourth behind Labour, is holding elections this summer for both co-convenor roles after Patrick Harvie, its very long-serving co-convenor, announced he was standing down.
Greer, a regional list MSP for West of Scotland, said:
People are sick of politicians telling them to accept ‘hard choices’ when they can see greedy landlords, polluters and the super-rich getting an easy ride.
I’m proud of my track record, taking on the extremely wealthy and delivering for ordinary people. I’ve increased taxes on landlords and higher earners, raising billions of pounds to protect public services like the NHS from further budget cuts. I’ve delivered relief to struggling families by cancelling school meal debts. And I’ve fought back against corporate greed to protect Loch Lomond from Flamingo Land’s destructive mega-resort proposals.
As Scottish Greens co-leader, I would take us into the next election demanding an end to the outrageous tax breaks currently enjoyed by aristocrats, big businesses and the royal family. If the super-rich pay their fair share, we can deliver more free bus travel, more free school meals and more of the support people really need in their lives.
We can end child poverty and tackle the climate crisis, but only if we fix a system rigged by the super-rich.
Jessica Elgot has written a good analysis of the significance of Jake Berry defecting to Reform UK. Here is an extract.
There is one saving grace for the Conservatives. There may come a point where it becomes much more unpalatable for Reform to continue to act as a retirement home for failed Conservative politicians.
Berry’s defection is probably still a net positive, but if hordes of his ilk begin to follow then there will come a time when that becomes deeply awkward for a party that has made gains on the back of Conservative failures.
Can Nigel Farage truly claim to be running an insurgent party railing against the chaos of the past 14 years of Tory rule – especially the perceived failures on migration – if his party is suddenly stuffed full of former Tory ministers hoping desperately to now stand for Reform and return to parliament under his banner?
And here is the whole article.
Badenoch rejects official figures saying 24% of people disabled, claiming this based on definition so wide it’s meaningless
Here are the main points from Kemi Badenoch’s speech.
We now live in a country where one in four people self report as disabled, and people are receiving disability benefits for having tennis elbow. I know some may disagree with me, but I do not believe that one in four of us can be considered disabled without the term losing all meaning.
There is an explanation for the ‘one in four’ figure (24%, to be precise) in this DWP report. It is based on the definition of disabled in the Equality Act, which says a person is considered to have a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment that has ‘substantial’ and ‘long term’ negative effects on their ability to do normal daily activities.
We will have to win arguments, arguments that too many in politics have forgotten how to make – like a life of work being better than one dependent on the state, not just better for society, although we believe that to, but actually better for the soul, that it feels better to contribute and enjoy the freedom that comes with paying your own way.
Too many young people are growing up not knowing that. They think that a life on benefits is an alternative to working. They think that isolating themselves at home is OK because starting a job feels daunting. We have to show them a better way.
We need to win the argument that an ever more generous welfare budget isn’t kind, it’s cruel. It locks people out of opportunity. It puts support for those who genuinely need it at risk.
Every other party thinks the public want more welfare, but I think people have more common sense than that. I think that they can see the damage it’s doing to our country.
There will always be some people who need help from the state, people who have a really challenging disability, people who have worked and paid into the system for years, but who lose their jobs suddenly through no fault of their own.
But we can’t afford to be spending a billion pounds a month on benefits for foreign nationals. It is not unreasonable to expect someone to have paid in and become a British citizen before they unlock access to sickness benefits.
That was a plan we put forward yesterday, a plan that Labour voted down.
We also clearly cannot afford to support one in four people who now classify themselves as disabled. We are going to have to draw a line in the sand about which conditions the state gives out support for.
Food intolerances are a medical fact, but they’re not something we should be handing out new cars for. This is not a joke. This actually happens. And anxiety and mild depression are real conditions. But that doesn’t mean that those suffering should be signed off work courtesy of the taxpayer.
She said the Centre for Social Justice thinktank has published a report saying cutting these benefits could save £9bn, which would be used to fund better treatment for people with mental health conditions.
We brought it in because we believe the people on benefits should have to make the same decisions on having children as everyone else but Labour and Reform MPs don’t even understand what the cap does, and they don’t care that lifting it would create another £3bn pound black hole in our finances.
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She rejected claims that the Tories were not entitled to criticise the state of the welfare system because they were in power until last year. In fact, the last government had a good record, she said. She said the welfare system was “dysfunctional mess” in 2010. The Tories simplified the system with universal credit, and brought the welfare bill down, she said.
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She said the welfare system should act like a “trampoline”, cushioning your fall and pushing you back on your feet, not like a “giant net”, engulfing you and making it impossible to climb out.
Q: Boris Johnson said recently the Tories should just ignore Reform UK. But you are attacking them all the time, and your poll ratings are down. Do you think you should take Johnson’s advice?
Badenoch said it was the media who should take Johnson’s advice. They were the ones constantly going on about Nigel Farage, she said.
Badenoch dismisses Jake Berry as ‘banana republic’ opportunist after his defection to Reform
Q: Does it worry you that ambitious politicians on the right think they have to join Reform UK to get on?
Badenoch said there are a lot of people who come into politics “just to play the game of politics”. They follow the polls, and defect, she said. She was different, she suggested. She said she was working on a proper plan for government.
UPDATE: Badenoch said:
This is something which I say again and again, that there are a lot of people who come into politics just to play the game of politics. And they will follow polls and defect wherever they can, like they do in banana republics, to wherever they think that they can win.
We have to do more than win. We have to be ready with a plan. This is what Labour got wrong. They had no plan. They were just focused on the election, and now they’re in government, and they’re completely at sea, they cannot deliver anything.
All of the people who are not interested in coming up with a proper policy plan and just want to jump ship are welcome to do so, because when the time comes, at the next general election, the public are going to be looking for a serious, credible alternative. We are the only serious, credible alternative.
Q: Do you accept that the benefits bill went up under the Tories? And what has Nigel Farage got to appeal to people like Jake Berry that you haven’t?
Badenoch says the welfare bill went up because of the pandemic.
That was a global problem, and I can tell you that if Labour or even Reform had been in charge during the pandemic, we would be in a much worse situation than than we are now.
She says David Jones actually defected to Reform UK in January. “What’s interesting is that they’re having to restate the story again,” she says.
And she says Farage tells people “whatever it is they want to hear”, she claims. She says she tells the truth.
Badenoch dismisses suggestion that defections to Reform UK reflect badly on her leadership
Q: You have lost a second former cabinet minister to Reform UK within a week. (Former Welsh secretary David Jones, and Jake Berry.) What does that say about your leadership?
Badenoch says she has set out her views here. If people want more welfare spending and higher taxes, they should join other parties, she says.
Badenoch says supporting triple lock for pensions is Tory policy
Q: Do you agree with the OBR that the triple lock is unsustainable?
Badenoch says the immediate problem is with working age benefits. That is where welfare reform needs to start.
She says the triple lock is Conservative policy. “Right now” the party wants to focus on sickness and disability benefits, she says.
Badenoch has finished her speech, and is now taking questions.
She says the Tories are the only party serious about getting welfare spending down.
