CONSERVATIVE Party leader Kemi Badenoch has said that Labour MPs do not want to cut immigration and that replacing Sir Keir Starmer will make no difference to the “instability” of the government.
Asked about Labour’s latest plan to get a grip of the small boats crisis, she said on GB News: “I think the Home Secretary has actually been very brave, because when I saw her standing there, I could see all of the Labour backbenchers looking sick at the announcements that she was making, because they don’t want to cut immigration.
“We tried all sorts of things to cut immigration, and we kept running into legal obstacles, endless lawfare. We tried again and again and again. If you remember Katherine, those were the things that we were rowing about. How much tougher can we be? We had a Rwanda scheme that should have gone in 2022 and the judges blocked it again and again and again.
“That is why I have said we are going to leave the ECHR, because until we do so, we will never get round any of these problems. Shabana Mahmood is going to learn that lesson, but until then we’re going to support her.
“Quite a lot of the things she has said are good, positive steps. I said baby steps, but it’s a positive direction. Let’s support her. There are some things she did announce that we don’t agree with, but she’s going to need our help if she’s going to get this over the line, because Labour don’t like what she’s doing.”
Kemi Badenoch GB News 18:11.jpeg
She was asked why she wants Labour to succeed when it will make life harder for Conservatives: “But it’s not about whether life is harder or easier for Conservatives, it’s about whether life is harder or easier for those people out there, for your viewers, that’s what I’m focused on.
“I’m not doing this so that I can just be an MP for the sake of being an MP. I am doing this because I want life in our country to be better. I don’t want my children growing up in a dangerous country. I don’t want my children growing up in a place where they don’t have any affinity with others in their country.
“That means getting a grip on our borders, especially illegal migration. If Labour can sort that, the whole country is going to be happy, we’ve got to put party politics aside when it comes to controlling borders, and let’s just deal with the situation we have. Labour are in government. If they have good policies, we will support them. They have bad policies, we will oppose them.”
Badenoch added: “She [Mahmood] will need to move very quickly. But I am not optimistic about what her back benches will allow her to do. That’s why I’m lending the votes. But as I said, without leaving the ECHR, I don’t see how this will work.
“We put out a 200-page report showing how again and again and again, the ECHR stops us from controlling our borders, stops us from deporting people who have no business here. It stops us from being able to protect our veterans.
“We have soldiers in their 70s who are being hounded in the late stage of life because of the ECHR. And we put out a report that explains that this is happening. That’s why we’ve got to deal with it. We will have human rights in our country, as we always did. The right to a family life existed before 1997 when it was put into law by Labour. It will continue, but we need to get a grip on borders, and we need to stop the boats.”
On Reform UK’s plan to stop Universal Credit for foreign nationals, including EU citizens, she said: “It will take years and years and years to re-negotiate the Brexit agreement. I mean, look at how much hassle we had. The idea that the EU is just going to say, ‘all right, Nigel, what do you want? We’ll give it to you’. That is for the birds.
“And also, we need to be fair to some of these people. We had a lot of debates during Brexit. We had a lot of research, a lot of work done on how can we do right by EU citizens who have the right to live here, who don’t. We created a settled status scheme for them. That was the fair thing to do.
“Their reciprocal arrangements for Brits living in Spain here, lots of people on the Costa del Sol and so on. Let’s be fair to these people, simply ripping that up just because it’s fun or because you want to distinguish yourself from the Conservatives who’ve actually done the real work on this, I don’t think is fair.
“Let’s focus on the things that we have put in our borders plan, deporting all foreign criminals, it doesn’t matter whether they’re EU or not. Let’s get them out, removing benefits from a lot of people who have no business being here. Those are tough policies, but what you can tell from us is that we will be tough, but also fair. What Reform announced today is not fair.”
Asked if she had a message for Nigel Farage, she said: “I think that it’s very amusing that three months after we make announcements, he repeats them, but adds a little bit of sprinkle of what looks like sawdust, to be honest, on top.
“If you want to be able to run a government, you need to do the work. You cannot copy other people’s homework. You’re getting it wrong, and that’s going to be unfair on millions of people.”
She said she would lead the Conservatives into the next election: “Of course, I will still be Leader of the Opposition. I’m leading a strong team. We’re the only credible alternative to Labour.
“The truth is, what we’re seeing with Labour is a lot of instability. As I said at PMQs last week, it doesn’t matter who they replace him [Keir Starmer] with. They’re still the same back benches sitting there, still the same people who want to increase spending on welfare, who don’t know how to run the economy. None of them have ever run a business. Most of them have never even worked in the private sector. They’ve all come from the public sector, trade unions.
“They don’t know where money comes from, and that’s why they have things like this terrible budget. We need to get them to not raise taxes and punish everyone else.”
