Tory leadership live: Badenoch wins as poll shows Conservative party membership numbers at lowest ever

The chancellor has admitted “I was wrong” to promise no tax rises during the general election campaign as she is quizzed over the tax hikes she announced in Wednesday’s Budget.

On this week’s edition of Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Rachel Reeves was shown a clip of her on 11 June, in which she said: “We don’t need higher taxes. What we need is growth and I don’t want to, and I have no plans to increase any taxes beyond those which we have already set out.”

When asked for her response to now having increased the overall tax burden by £40bn, she said: “I was wrong on 11 June. I didn’t know everything, because when I arrived at the Treasury on 5 July, so just under a month after I said those words.

“I was taken into a room by the senior officials at the Treasury, and they set out the huge black hole in the public finances beyond which anybody knew about at the time of the general election, because the previous government hid it from the country, they hid it from parliament and indeed, they hid it from the official independent forecaster.”

The chancellor has defended Wednesday’s Budget as she accused the Tories of a “massive cover-up” when it comes to the public’s finances.

Speaking on Sky News on Sunday morning, she also defended previously voting for two cuts to national insurance after raising the rate this week.

“They were sold on a false promise,” she said. “The money clearly wasn’t available. I supported those cuts to national insurance because they were costed and funded. But now we find out those numbers didn’t add up.”

She added: “There was a massive cover-up.”

Newly elected Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has been condemned over an unearthed image that shows her making a joke about rape on her personal Facebook page.

The former women and equalities minister has been criticised by anti-domestic abuse charity Women’s Aid, which said it was appalled by the image.

In a post on her own page dated from January 2008, which was still visible on her profile as recently as this week, Ms Badenoch shared an image of three men with the caption: “The Drummond Beer Rape incident.”

Political Correspondent Millie Cooke reports:

Rachel Reeves has defended her decision to raise taxes at this week’s Budget, insisting her plan provided the stability needed to secure growth.

In a series of media interviews on Sunday, the Chancellor argued that her plans for economic reform would bring more growth than independent economists were forecasting.

Ms Reeves has faced stiff criticism for her decisions to raise employers’ national insurance contributions and increase capital gains tax and inheritance tax in an effort to pay for higher investment in schools and the NHS.

But speaking to the Sunday Times, the Chancellor said she had delivered on a manifesto promise to restore economic stability and was now making growth her “number one priority”.

She said: “I set out a robust set of fiscal rules within a framework which means we will not borrow for day-to-day spending and we will get debt down as a share of the economy. Now we have fixed the foundations of our economy, I am going for growth. Because we cannot tax and spend our way to prosperity, nor can we tax and spend our way to better public services. Instead, we need economic growth and we need economic reform.”

Ms Reeves is expected to set out a series of reforms to pensions, welfare and industrial strategy in the coming weeks.

Combined with reforms to the planning system to speed up building projects, Labour hopes the changes will be enough to significantly boost investment, productivity and economic growth.

Without higher growth, economists have suggested that the Government will need to find another £9 billion after next year in order to avoid cuts to unprotected departments.

Speaking to broadcasters, Ms Reeves repeated her claim that she would not need to raise taxes again following Wednesday’s Budget.

She said: “We have now set a public spending trajectory for the rest of this Parliament. We don’t need to raise more money in tax, so businesses and investors should have confidence that our public finances are now on a sound footing.”

The Tory leadership election campaign saw saw gaffes including Ms Badenoch’s suggestion maternity pay is “excessive”, her claim that 50,000 “very bad” civil servants should be jailed and repeated allegations of “dirty tricks” including around the shock ousting of moderate Mr Cleverly by MPs.

The campaign, which followed the party’s worst general election defeat in history, saw six candidates go head to head for the backing of MPs and party members over more than 100 days.

While she won the backing of more than half of the 96,000 Tory members who voted, Kemi Badenoch was supported by just 42 of the remaining 121 Conservative MPs.

Mr Sunak urged the Conservatives to unite behind their new leader, saying: “I know that she will be a superb leader of our great party. She will renew our party, stand up for Conservative values, and take the fight to Labour.” And his predecessor, Boris Johnson, said Ms Badenoch brought “a much needed zing and zap to the Conservative Party”.

Kemi Badenoch has become the fourth woman to lead the Conservative Party.

She comes after Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss.

Kemi Badenoch takes over the Conservatives as the party recorded its first poll lead over Labour since the Partygate scandal broke in December 2021.

BMG Research found the Tories on 29 per cent of the vote, compared with Sir Keir’s party on 28 per cent.

However, a YouGov poll published ahead of the result found four in 10 voters had an unfavourable view of Ms Badenoch, including 29 per cent of Conservative voters, while Britons were more likely to think Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer would make a better prime minister.

Kemi Badenoch faces the daunting challenge of trying to win back voters from the right-wing populist party Reform UK, while also seeking not to further alienate more moderate Conservative voters who abandoned the party for the Lib Dems in July.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage criticised the new leader after her victory was announced, pointing to Conservative failures and her roles in government.

David Lammy has called Kemi Badenoch’s election as the first Black leader of a Westminster party “an important moment for our whole country”.

The Foreign secretary said: “Your election as the first Black leader of a Westminster party is an important moment not only for Brits from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds, but for our whole country.”