You can read our report on the debate by our senior political correspondent Peter Walker here
Closing summary
Conservative leadership candidates Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick took part in a GB News special tonight, setting out their vision for the Tory party. Moderated by Christopher Hope, the candidates covered subjects including immigration, culture wars and the European Court of Human Rights.
Badenoch hit back at a Tory MP’s suggestion that she could not lead the party because she was too “preoccupied” with her children, saying “it isn’t always women who have parental responsibilities”. The Conservative leadership candidate was asked about the remarks made by Christopher Chope earlier on Thursday.
Asked about the bullying allegations first published by the Guardian, she said “of course they run to the Guardian to tell lies about me”. It’s because she got the bad people out of her department, she says.
Badenoch said she is an “engineer” who can fix the “broken system” and renew the Tory party. In her pitch to members, the leadership hopeful told the GB News debate: “This broken system is going to need an engineer to fix it. I am an engineer. But I cannot fix it without your help, that is why I’m asking for your support today. Together, we can do this. Together, we can fix the system that is broken. Together, we can renew.”
Badenoch said Nigel Farage speaks with “clarity” and “conviction”. She told the GB News Tory leadership debate: “Nigel Farage speaks with clarity, he speaks with conviction. When people hear him speak, they believe that he understands their concerns. For a long time, when we were speaking, people just heard this technocratic, managerialist language that didn’t mean very much to people. It was all policy and no principles, that is why I keep emphasising principles.”
Meanwhile, Jenrick claimed the government had relinquished sovereignty of the Chagos Islands “so that David Lammy can feel better when he goes to a dinner party in north London”. The Tory leadership hopeful told the GB News debate: “David Lammy and Keir Starmer have just handed sovereign British territory with a critical military base on it to a close ally of China. Why? So that David Lammy can feel better when he goes to a dinner party in north London. Whose interests does he think he serves?”
Jenrick said he would cap migration in “the tens of thousands or lower” if he were in charge. Asked to put a number on his pledge to cap the number of people entering the UK, he said: “I would do the tens of thousands or lower. The most important point is we’ve got to get parliament to do this so we can look the public in the eye this time and say it’s actually going to happen.” He denied he was just making hardline remarks on immigration to win over Tory members.
Jenrick claimed he had argued against the depletion of the armed forces while he served as a minister in the previous Tory government. He said: “Because I’m a fiscal Conservative, the easiest thing in the world would be to say you today, let’s spend more money on the armed forces without saying how are we going to get this money. I don’t want taxes to rise, I don’t want the state to get bigger, so I’ve said let’s take that money from our international aid budget and let’s spend it on our armed forces. That is the best way.”
That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, for tonight. Thanks for following along throughout what was, admittedly, not one of the great political TV specials of our time. Have a very pleasant evening, nevertheless.
