Kemi Badenoch Squirms As Emma Barnett Asks For Any Tory Economic Policies In Car Crash Interview

Emma Barnett interviewing Kemi Badenoch on TodayKemi Badenoch clashed with Emma Barnett repeatedly this morning over the Tories’ response to Labour’s spending review as the Conservative leader refused to offer up any of her party’s own economic plans.The Tories have laid into the government’s spending review after it announced how it was going to spend an extra £300 billion across the NHS, net zero and the defence department.Shadow chancellor Mel Stride claimed it was “not worth the paper that it was written on” and predicted taxes will have to go up in the autumn Budget to pay for it.So on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, presenter Barnett asked the leader of the opposition what kind of economic policy the Tories would run with instead.Badenoch just said: “We wouldn’t have made these errors in the first place.“What’s happening is Labour has made a mess and people are asking us exactly how we would have cleaned it up – we wouldn’t have made the mess in the first place.”“Well it’s pretty early to say it’s their mess when you were in power for as long as you were,” Barnett hit back, asking again what policies the Tories would drop.Badenoch said she rejected the “premise” of the question, and that reform was needed for public services.Barnett replied: “It is important to get a sense of what your policies will be so people can support you. Would you not reverse the national insurance hike, even though you didn’t agree with it?”“There is no election today,” the Tory leader said. “What I’m not doing is setting out a manifesto for four years’ time right now.“Oppositions don’t have the detail that the government has. What I can do is look at the choices she is making specifically and say she is not making the right choices, we would have made different choices.”“It’s just your polling is very low, Kemi Badenoch,” Barnett said – the Tories came in fourth place on 16% of the vote in a major YouGov poll last month.Badenoch said she was “not going into the figures” about what she would do to the welfare state, although she admitted it does need to be cut.“We’re in a worse situation now than we were when we [the Tories] left office,” she said. “We are in dire straits and we need to talk about that.“Asking how much we would cut here and there when we’re not in government – we’re not in government anymore, Emma!”Barnett replied that she was trying to get a sense of “what’s possible” and the Conservatives’ vision.But Badenoch angrily hit back that she wants to allow business to create growth, not “support them to make decisions to cut staff”.Referring back to the Tories’ 14 years in government, she said: “Of course we were in government, but we had Covid, Emma, we had a pandemic which cost £400bn, we had furlough, we paid people to stay at home. What’s Labour’s excuse?”Barnett tried again to extract any kind of policy, to which Badenoch replied: “I’m not going to set out a manifesto, I am leader of the opposition, my job is to hold the government to account –”“It’s also to tell people what you stand for and what they should vote for,” the presenter reminded her.“I’m sorry Emma but you are asking questions which are changing the very focus of what it is I am talking about,” Badenoch said.After a few more minutes of angry back and forth, the Tory leader said: “Emma, we need to start talking about how we are going to fix this country. It’s very easy to win elections if you are prepared to lie and you are prepared to tell people things that aren’t true just so you can win.“i’m not prepared to do that, I’m being honest with the public –”“Why is it not cutting through?” Barnett asked.Badenoch just ignored that and insisted: “We need to fix the nation’s finances.”During a speech later in the day, the Tory leader seemed to reference the disastrous exchange, saying she had been speaking to “an interviewer who didn’t understand that there are other ways to reduce the size of the state.”Related...Kemi Badenoch Sparks Widespread Mockery After Claiming She 'Gets Better Every Week'Kemi Badenoch Says Introducing Trump-Style Travel Ban Could Be 'Viable' For UKExcruciating Moment Kemi Badenoch Struggles To Answer BBC's Fundamental Liz Truss Question

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