Kemi Badenoch to admit Tory ‘no plan’ Brexit was a mistake

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Kemi Badenoch is to own up to a series of mistakes made by the Tory governments she served in but warned that Labour under Keir Starmer is repating the mistakes of Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.

In a major speech in central London on Thursday, the new Tory leader will admit that leaving the European Union “without a plan for growth” was a mistake by her party under Johnson.

It will be the first time a senior Conservative leader has admitted that the chaos wrought on the UKand damage to its economy caused by Brexit was a huge error.

But Ms Badenoch will use her speech to claim that the financial woes and social discontent among groups like farmers and pensioners suffered by Starmer’s government are caused by the same reason of there being “no plan” before Labour came into government.

Ms Badenoch will insist that she will develop a plan to implement policies before announcing them. It comes just a week after it was suggested she may not have any policies for three years.

Listing a catalogue of Tory mistakes because there was no plan to deliver policies, she will say: “I will acknowledge the Conservative Party made mistakes. We announced that we would leave the European Union before we had a plan for growth outside the EU.

“We made it the law that we would deliver net zero carbon emissions by 2050. And only then did we start thinking about how we would do that. We announced that we would lower immigration, but immigration kept going up.

“These mistakes were made because we told people what they wanted to hear first and then tried to work it out later. That is going to stop under my leadership. If we are going to turn our country around, we’re going to have to say some things that aren’t easy to hear.”

Attacking Labour she will claim: “Labour are having even worse problems than we did, because they announced policy without a plan. Policies without a plan are not policies, they’re just announcements.

“That’s why Labour are struggling. It’s the old cliche that ‘failing to plan, is planning to fail.’

She will add: “When you haven’t worked out what you’re going to do in opposition, you will accept whatever you’re given in government. That’s why Rachel Reeves announced mad and bad ideas on snatching winter fuel and taxing family farms.”

She will suggest that Ms Reeves had simply taken options from government officials who had been trying to get them agreed for years but have been stopped by the Tories.

“Those options were presented to us, time and time again by officials, and we rejected them time and time again because they would hurt so many people for so little benefit. The chancellor took them because she has no ideas of her own.”

She will add: “It’s the same with education. The schools bill going through parliament now has one or two bits on safeguarding that may be good… the rest of it is worse than garbage. It is pure vandalism.

“The new Labour government will not fix any of the problems we have faced for decades. Because they wasted their time in opposition. We will not do the same.”

Responding to the expected comments, Ellie Reeves, chair of the Labour Party, said:“The public rightly lost trust in the Conservatives after 14 long years of failure in government. Far from rebuilding trust, Kemi Badenoch is doing the exact opposite. Another speech, but no apology for her role in Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-Budget that crashed the economy and left a £22 billion black hole in the public finances.”