{"id":443555,"date":"2026-01-28T19:25:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T19:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/443555\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T19:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T19:25:07","slug":"kemi-badenoch-apologises-for-suella-braverman-mental-health-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/443555\/","title":{"rendered":"Kemi Badenoch apologises for Suella Braverman mental health claim"},"content":{"rendered":"

In her speech, Badenoch also took aim at former politicans who “are in denial” and “don’t want to admit that immigration is too high”.<\/p>\n

“Some people say that we need to split the difference and find the centre ground,” she said. <\/p>\n

“It’s not about the centre ground, it’s about the common ground and it is about common sense.”<\/p>\n

She added that “most people in our country want to control immigration” and the Tories were “a mainstream party”.<\/p>\n

Taking questions from journalists after her speech, Badenoch was asked about a new political movement launched by former West Midlands mayor Sir Andy Street and former Scottish Conservative leader earlier this week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The initiative – named Prosper UK – aims to win back centrist voters who feel “politically homeless”.<\/p>\n

Asked how damaging the new movement could be to the Conservative Party, Badenoch said: “Anybody who is trying to push an agenda that is not the platform I stood on is not being helpful.”<\/p>\n

She added: “If they’ve got new ideas which are on the right, not left-wing ideas, and we will welcome them. But right now we need to move away from any sort of factionalism or groupings.”<\/p>\n

The Conservative leader said her party was “not a party of the left and we should not be accommodating people who want to paint that picture”.<\/p>\n

Asked if this referred to Davidson and Sir Andy, Badenoch denied this, telling the BBC: “Ruth Davidson and Andy Street have been very supportive, but they are supporting the agenda which I’m delivering.”<\/p>\n

However, she added that there were other people who had joined their movement who had previously defected to the Liberal Democrats and “anyone who wants a different agenda needs to understand that that’s not coming”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In her speech, Badenoch also took aim at former politicans who “are in denial” and “don’t want to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,63,137,514,515],"class_list":{"0":"post-443555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}