Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has said the Tories must not become a “repository of disenchantment”, but instead be about “offering hope”.
The Tories must position themselves as the party that can “fix problems”, even as Reform UK, currently leading the Conservatives in many polls, was “stealing everyone’s oxygen”, Badenoch said in an interview with the Financial Times.
Badenoch also said that Argentine President Javier Milei, known for lowering his country’s stubborn inflation and ruthless cost-cutting, was the “template” for her leadership.
Responding to a question about whether the UK needed a version of Milei, and whether she was a politician like him, she said: “Yes and yes.”
Badenoch’s interview with the Financial Times comes after she reshuffled her shadow cabinet this week, just eight months into her leadership of the party.
In that time, the Conservatives have regularly polled third or fourth – behind Reform UK and Labour, and sometimes the Liberal Democrats – and suffered heavy defeats in local elections in May.
Despite concerns over her command of the party, Badenoch pushed aside concerns that her leadership was under threat in the interview with the FT.
“I can’t spend all my time worrying about regicide. I would lose my mind,” she said.
“I’m so thick-skinned to the point where I don’t even notice if people are trying to create harm. That’s extremely useful in this job.”
In her reshuffle, former Home Secretary James Cleverly was brought back to the front bench, with Badenoch saying that she wanted to “make sure all our heavy hitters” are there.
Cleverly has been a backbench MP since being knocked out of the Conservative Party leadership contest that Badenoch won. He has warned against the party copying Reform UK policies, urging the Tories to be “more normal”.
Last month, Badenoch told the BBC that she was “going to get better” as party leader, adding: “You don’t want people to be the very best they’re going to be on day one.”
Badenoch cited Milei as her inspiration because she was concerned by the sight of the state “spreading its tentacles everwhere”.
Milei captured international attention when he won Argentina’s October 2023 presidential election, during which he often brandished a chainsaw as a symbol for his plan to slash government spending.
In 2024, Argentina registered its first budget surplus in more than a decade.. And last month, the country’s monthly inflation rate dropped to 1.5%, the lowest it has been in more than five years.
Badenoch said that she was being “very, very relentless” in pursuing the economy, adding that she was “terrified” by levels of government debt and that she was opposed to Labour’s tax rises.
“Wealth is being driven out of the country” by higher taxes, she said, adding: “More young people are leaving as well.”
