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Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch will on Thursday accuse chancellor Rachel Reeves of spreading “crazy and bad ideas” as she derided some of the Labor government’s plans for schools as “vandalism” and “worse than rubbish”.
Badenoch will claim her party, while in government, stood firm against repeated attempts by Whitehall officials to push through proposals to scrap the universal winter fuel payment and close inheritance tax loopholes on farms.
Reeves has pursued both policies “because she has no ideas of her own,” the conservative leader said.
While Labour’s popularity has fallen since taking office last July, the Conservatives have been overtaken in the polls by Nigel Farage’s UK Reform party, which has been bolstered by several low-level Conservative defections.
Under Badenoch, the party has refused to offer policies to challenge Labour, saying they will reveal them closer to the next election.
In a speech in central London on Thursday – only her second press conference since taking the reins as party leader two and a half months ago – Badenoch will use the fiery language that is fast becoming a signature.
Accusing Labor of failing to adequately plan for government before taking office, she will say: “When you haven’t thought about what you are going to do in opposition, you will accept whatever is given in government. That’s why Rachel Reeves announced crazy, bad ideas for winter fuel grabs and family farm taxes.”
Badenoch, a well-known critic of Civil Service culture, will add: “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 gain. .”
Ellie Reeves, the Labor leader and the chancellor’s sister, dismissed Badenoch’s planned intervention as “another speech but no apology for her role in Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget that crashed the economy”.
She said the Tories under Badenoch have “nothing to offer”, arguing the party “hasn’t listened and they haven’t learned”.
Badenoch will also turn her ire on Labour’s education policies, declaring: “The schools bill going through parliament now has one or two parts to defend that might be good. . . the rest is worse than garbage. It’s pure vandalism.”
The Tories have already lashed out at education secretary Bridget Phillipson for scrapping reforms introduced by the Tories, including giving freedoms to academies.
The opposition party accused the government of backtracking on Wednesday, abandoning a proposal that would remove academies’ freedom to set teacher pay levels.
However, a Phillipson spokesman said it was always the government’s plan to allow schools to make attractive salary offers to recruit and retain staff.
Claiming Labor “wasted” its time in opposition, Badenoch will say Sir Keir Starmer’s administration has “announced policy without a plan” and continues to “prescribe solutions that are actually making things worse”.
She will try to be styled as a truth-teller who is willing to admit mistakes, outlining a series of mistakes made by the last Tory government she served in, including as business secretary.
Admissions of failure would include announcing Britain would leave the EU before drawing up a plan for growth outside the bloc and pledging to reduce migration levels while presiding over growth.
The Conservatives also passed legislation to reach net zero by 2050, and only then “we started thinking about how we were going to do that,” she added.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey will also deliver a keynote speech on Thursday in which he will call on the government to negotiate a new UK-EU customs union by 2030, arguing that it would ‘allowed Britain to “deal with President Trump from a position of strength, not weakness”.
A long-term ambition to rejoin the EU was in the Lib Dems’ manifesto last summer, although Thursday’s speech will be the first time the party has given a specific timeline for rejoining the customs union.
Davey will argue that “the answer cannot be to do what some – like the Leader of the Conservative Party – would like us to do (and) approach Trump from a position of weakness, go to him and to beg him for whatever trade agreement he will give us”.
He will also criticize Farage’s approach of “frowning at Trump and licking his boots”.
