A vote for Reform will let in Labour and allow Sir Keir Starmer to reverse Brexit, strengthen militant trade unions and tear up common sense rules on gender, Kemi Badenoch warned yesterday.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, the Business Secretary said Tory voters flirting with Reform risk ushering in a Labour government that will have no interest in cutting immigration – and which will smother business in red tape, putting the economy into reverse.
Mrs Badenoch was speaking on the campaign trail in Clacton, where she and Home Secretary James Cleverly spent the day helping fellow Essex Tory Giles Watling defend his seat against the Nigel Farage juggernaut. The Reform leader made a dramatic decision this week to stand for parliament.
In a withering assessment, she dismissed Mr Farage as a ‘showbusiness candidate’, adding: ‘The Prime Minister is somebody who has to run the country, not just drink pints.’
She predicted the Tories would succeed in making it ‘eighth time unlucky’ for the Reform leader, whose seven previous parliamentary bids failed. ‘Will Mr Farage be here when we’re doing all of those less glamorous issues, doing public meetings about pylons and potholes?’ she said.
A vote for Reform will let in Labour and allow Sir Keir Starmer to reverse Brexit, strengthen militant trade unions and tear up common sense rules on gender, Kemi Badenoch warned yesterday
![In an interview with the Daily Mail's Political Editor Jason Groves (left), the Business Secretary said Tory voters flirting with Reform risk ushering in a Labour government that will have no interest in cutting immigration](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/06/08/00/85862425-0-In_an_interview_with_the_Daily_Mail_s_Political_Editor_Jason_Gro-m-72_1717802421480.jpg)
In an interview with the Daily Mail’s Political Editor Jason Groves (left), the Business Secretary said Tory voters flirting with Reform risk ushering in a Labour government that will have no interest in cutting immigration
![Kemi Badenoch with James Cleverly and Clacton candidate Giles Watling during his campaign trail on Friday](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/06/08/00/85862427-0-image-a-73_1717802477268.jpg)
Kemi Badenoch with James Cleverly and Clacton candidate Giles Watling during his campaign trail on Friday
Referencing the Reform leader’s long-standing relationship with Donald Trump, she added: ‘Is he going to be doing that or is he going to be in America?
‘I think the people of Clacton need to ask that question – who’s going to be here working for you?’ She continued: ‘It is really important that we do keep Reform out because all Reform is doing is making Labour stronger. There is so much which we have been doing… while Farage has just been laughing and mocking.
‘All the work that I’ve been doing on equality rights, women’s rights – trying to stop men from going into women’s bathrooms because they give themselves a label. All of that stuff will disappear under Labour.
‘They are not interested in maintaining common sense. And I think a lot of the people in Clacton, a lot of people who have common sense, will understand what is at stake.’
Mrs Badenoch said she was ‘not surprised’ that Labour opposed her recent pledge to rewrite the party’s Equality Act to allow organisations to bar transgender women from single-sex spaces, or by its plan to make it easier for people to change gender. And she ridiculed Sir Keir over his struggles to define what a woman is, saying he was ‘detached from reality’.
She said: ‘If you are prepared to say women can have penises, then what are you going to say about things, more complex issues, like the economy?’
The Business Secretary is the bookmakers’ favourite to succeed Rishi Sunak if the Tories lose the election. But she was diplomatic when asked if she thought she could run a better campaign. ‘I don’t think this would be an easy campaign for anyone,’ she said.
Instead, she turned her fire on Labour, saying Angela Rayner’s plans to introduce a massive package of workers’ rights would strengthen the hand of union barons and ‘destroy’ business and jobs.
Mrs Badenoch also claimed Labour was clearing the path for a return to EU membership by ‘blaming everything on Brexit’. She said there was ‘more to do’ on Brexit and made clear she would be willing to quit the European Convention on Human Rights in some circumstances.
‘The convention is clearly having serious implications for the lawfare we’re seeing around immigration, and it needs some kind of reform,’ she said.
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