The new Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has said the Partygate scandal was “overblown” as she rejected the need to “churn over” everything that went wrong with previous Tory prime ministers.
Badenoch won the party leadership on Saturday and said she was going to be “honest” about what went wrong in the party under her predecessors.
However, speaking on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, the new party leader said Boris Johnson was a “great prime minister” and that he had fallen into a “trap” of breaking Covid rules that should never have been introduced.
Badenoch said she had resigned during Johnson’s premiership because of “serious issues” but not because of the Partygate scandal, which was “overblown”.
Asked whether the public was wrong to be upset about Partygate, when Johnson and others in Downing Street did not stick to the Covid rules they introduced, Badenoch said: “No, they were not wrong to be upset about Partygate. The problem was that we should not have criminalised everyday activities the way that we did. People going out for walks, all of them having fixed-penalty notices, that was what ended up creating a trap for Boris Johnson.”
Badenoch acknowledged Tory mistakes in government, saying: “We need to be honest, that we got things wrong. What I don’t want to do this morning is start listing all of the things that we got wrong. There’s plenty of time to do that. What I’m here to do is set out how there’s going to be a change under my leadership.”
She said it was unhelpful to “churn over” every incident that had happened in 14 years and there would be a “postmortem” on it in time. The Conservative leader said the main overarching thing that had gone wrong was a “loss of public trust”.
“Promises on immigration and on tax were not kept and that is something that we need to change,” Badenoch said. “Making promises without a plan, as we have seen with Rachel Reeves and what they had in their manifesto, will create a breakdown in the public trust.”
In response to the interview, Ellie Reeves, the chair of the Labour party, said: “Listening to Kemi Badenoch dismiss Partygate as ‘overblown’ will add insult to injury for families across Britain who followed the rules, missing loved one’s deaths and family funerals, whilst her colleagues partied in Downing Street …
“The leader may have changed but, on her first day in the job, Kemi Badenoch has proved three times that the Tories haven’t listened and they haven’t learned.”
Sarah Olney, the Lib Dem Cabinet Office spokesperson, said the comments were an “insult to those who lost family members during the pandemic while Boris Johnson partied and lied”.
“On day one of the job she’s already shown she’s completely out of touch with the public,” she added.
Badenoch will be putting together her top team in the coming days, having vowed to draw a line under the past. However, her shadow cabinet is likely to contain many familiar faces from Rishi Sunak’s time in government, including key allies and Tory rising stars Claire Coutinho and Laura Trott, who served as his energy secretary and in his Treasury team respectively.
Andrew Griffith, a rightwinger who did not make the cabinet under Sunak, has been tipped as a possible shadow chancellor after defending Badenoch on the airwaves. A former housing minister, Lee Rowley, is seen as a possible chief of staff.
On Sunday evening it was reported that Rebecca Harris had been appointed Conservative chief whip.
In a post on X, her predecessor, Stuart Andrew, wrote: “Rebecca Harris is a great friend and a brilliant whip. I wish her all the best in the role.”
The move has not been confirmed by the party.
Badenoch has said there will be a place offered in her shadow cabinet to all the Tory leadership contenders, who include Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel, Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat. However, James Cleverly, the former home and foreign secretary, has said he will not serve this time.
The new Conservative leader also suggested on Sunday that she wanted to bring in “meritocratic” talent from across the party and potentially from outside the pool of 120 MPs sitting in the Commons. There have been reports that she would like Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor and Conservative peer, to have a deputy leader role.
Sunak, who brought back David Cameron to be his foreign secretary by giving him a peerage, will shortly be granted a resignation honours list, potentially giving the Conservatives a chance to send a few more of their allies to the House of Lords.
