Jacob Rees-Mogg has called for the right to unite behind the Conservatives, saying Kemi Badenoch is showing that she is a serious leader.
Speaking on GB News, he said: “Now this is getting very interesting. That the polling is showing that there was no budget bounce for Andy Burnham, that the expectations that the Labour Party had and commentators had of an early election after a budget success are evaporating or falling to the ground with the leaves in autumn.
“The Tories are picking up. Kemi Badenoch has got us within 2% of Labour and ahead of Reform. If you think a year ago what was happening, the Tories were under 20%. Reform was in the lead. Labour was in the doldrums too. But the Greens and the Lib Dems, calypso collapso.
“Lib Dems under 10% for the first time in ages under the inspired leadership of Sir Ed Davey, and we don’t need to talk too much about the Greens and their hypnotic effect on the audience.
“This is really important because I’ve been bang on for ages about how the right needs to be united, but the easiest way to unite it is if it unites under the Conservative banner.
“And although it’s early days, I think voters want a change. They don’t like a hard left socialist government. They don’t like the fact that we’re being taken back into the European Union by stealth; that we’re going to have to pay money to the EU, that we’re going to be ordered about by the EU, that the European Court is going to tell us what to do, and we’re going to have mass migration sponsored by the EU.
“They don’t like any of that. They don’t like high taxes. They don’t like the fact that welfare is going to be £431 billion.
“And this means, facing serious circumstances, that we need a serious leader and Kemi Badenoch is showing us that. At Prime Minister’s Questions, she is formidable. In her speech at the party conference, she showed that oratory was not dead.
“And she is offering leadership; a type of leadership that people want to see. They want their political leaders to lead. There is a clarity and a forthrightness that I think is very welcome.
“And our friends in Reform, those of you who watched earlier, will see that Nigel and I always get on perfectly well. So I say genuinely, our friends in Reform have had a few difficulties.
“They’ve had a few mistakes, a few missteps. And that’s not to say they’re bad people. I think they’re not. I think they’ve got very good people in Reform, but they don’t have the administrative backing or the policy heft to be a serious prospect for government.
“So it’s good news for the Tories. It’s looking up under Kemi. This makes me very optimistic, especially after my side of the argument didn’t do so well in America yesterday.”
