Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has stated that the party is confronting the new reality of multi-party politics as it braces for losses in the upcoming local elections. She emphasized that she is leading a 'new party' and hopes for some notable successes when results are announced on Friday, but acknowledged that the era of Conservative and Labour national dominance is over.
Reform UK's Rise
Nigel Farage's Reform UK has consistently led national opinion polls for over a year and is expected to make significant gains in councils across England, as well as in the Scottish and Welsh parliamentary contests. Badenoch ruled out any deals with her rivals and claimed that her party has been strengthened by troublemakers defecting to Farage's party.
Speaking to the Press Association, she said: 'What we're going to see on Friday is what multi-party politics looks like. The two-party era has moved into a multi-party era. But the fact is none of these new parties or Labour have a plan for the country. What's astonishing is that a Labour government that came in less than two years ago on a landslide has become so unpopular. They thought governing was easy. It is not. The people who know how to govern, who know how to run things, are Conservatives. Things were not always perfect under us. I'm not pretending that, but we know what went wrong. We've acknowledged those mistakes and we've got a plan to fix things.'
Popularity and Polls
Badenoch is more popular than either Farage or Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, according to a YouGov poll last month, which gave her a net favourability rating of -21, compared to -38 for Farage and -45 for Starmer. However, her party still trails far behind Reform in national opinion polls. When asked if this indicates a need to change other faces at the top of her party, she downplayed the prospect of a reshuffle.
She stated: 'I have got a good team. We are a strong, united team. I'm very pleased with the Conservative MPs who work with me. I'm also very pleased with the councillors who we have who are running councils and those who want to run councils. I think that if people look across the board, many of the people who were causing problems in the Conservative Party have actually gone to Reform. What we have now is a happy, united team with a clear plan for councils, trying to keep council tax as low as possible while delivering the best services, getting cheap power into people's homes, bringing down costs for business, abolishing business rates. That's what Conservatives are doing today.'
Forecast Losses
Tory peer and polling expert Lord Hayward has forecast that the Conservatives will lose 600 seats when Thursday's votes are counted. Badenoch said the party hopes to make gains in areas like Wandsworth, south London, once a flagship Tory council known for its low taxes. She commented: 'We are fighting for every single vote. We're contesting a lot of councils, very competitively. I'm here in Wandsworth today. I would love to see Wandsworth go blue again. This was a flagship Conservative council which we lost four years ago. But in this era of multi-party politics, there are no safe seats, so we're fighting for every single vote. We're not counting our chickens, like parties like Reform are doing. We are telling people the Conservative Party is the only party that has a plan for this country, a new party under new leadership, with a plan to help fix councils up and down the UK.'
No Deals with Reform
She ruled out the possibility of a deal with Farage or even local pacts to run authorities with Reform. 'I don't want to see coalitions with Reform at local councils, because these are the people who we kicked out of the Conservative Party. Many of them are people who caused problems in our party and are the reason why we ended up losing,' she said. 'So, no thank you. No deals with Reform at national or local level.'
