{"id":274412,"date":"2026-01-31T22:13:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T22:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/274412\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T22:13:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T22:13:16","slug":"kemi-badenoch-regrets-tory-statement-about-suella-bravermans-mental-health-after-former-home-secretary-joins-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/274412\/","title":{"rendered":"Kemi Badenoch \u2018regrets\u2019 Tory statement about Suella Braverman&#8217;s mental health after former Home Secretary joins Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Tory leader also hit out at Sir Keir Starmer&#8217;s decision to travel to China.<\/p>\n<p>        <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Kemi Badenoch has said a statement about Suella Braverman's mental health &quot;should not have gone out.&quot;\" class=\"content-image\" data-image-catalogue-id=\"788155\" width=\"660\" height=\"370\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/788155.webp\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>    Kemi Badenoch has said a statement about Suella Braverman&#8217;s mental health &#8220;should not have gone out.&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Picture:<br \/>\nAlamy<\/p>\n<p class=\"standfirst\">Kemi Badenoch has said a Tory briefing about Suella Braverman\u2019s mental health \u201cshould not have gone out\u201d after a wave of backlash. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lbc.co.uk\/politics\/conservatives\/kemi-badenoch\/\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">The Conservative leader<\/a> stopped short of apologising after her party issued a statement suggesting the former home secretary quit the party for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lbc.co.uk\/politics\/reform-uk\/\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Reform UK<\/a> due to struggles with her mental health.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">The statement, which was retracted after an hour, read: \u201cIt was always a matter of when, not if, Suella would defect. The Conservatives did all we could to look after Suella\u2019s mental health, but she was clearly very unhappy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">\u201cShe says she feels that she has \u2018come home\u2019, which will come as a surprise to the people who chose not to elect a Reform MP in her constituency in 2024.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lbc.co.uk\/politics\/uk-politics\/gutter-politics-reform-hits-back-tories-suella-braverman-defection\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read more: Suella Braverman brands Tory &#8216;mental health&#8217; briefing &#8216;pathetic&#8217; as former Home Secretary defects to Reform UK<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">Read more: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lbc.co.uk\/politics\/uk-politics\/suella-braverman-defects-reform-uk\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman becomes latest Tory defect to Reform UK saying &#8216;it feels like I&#8217;ve come home&#8217;<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">Now, speaking to LBC\u2019s Natasha Clark, Ms Badenoch said the statement \u201cshould not have gone out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">\u201cThat statement was completely wrong,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">\u201cIt was sent in error and it was retracted immediately. And I&#8217;ve spoken to the person who did that, explaining to them what our party culture is.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">\u201cBut the difference between me and other people leading parties is that I will say when we&#8217;ve got something wrong and I&#8217;ll fix it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">\u201cNigel Farage and Keir Starmer don&#8217;t think that they&#8217;re doing anything wrong at all and they never apologise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">When pressed on whether she regrets the statement being released, Ms Badenoch said: \u201cWell, it should not have gone out. That&#8217;s why we retracted it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">Ms Braverman, who on Monday became Reform UK\u2019s eighth MP, branded the original statement \u201cpathetic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">Addressing a press conference in London set up by Reform to announce her deferral, the former minister said: &#8221; Those attacks say more about them, than they do about me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">Announcing her decision to join Reform earlier in the day, she said: &#8220;I feel like I&#8217;ve come home.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">Elsewhere, with Sir Keir Starmer touching down in China, the Tory leader accused the Labour Party of making the UK economically reliant on Beijing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">\u201cPretty much everything that Miliband is doing relies on Chinese wind farms, solar farms, electric vehicles,\u201d she told LBC.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">\u201cWe&#8217;re not building while deindustrialising our own economy and not building any manufacturing capacity. That is going to be terrible for our future and we need to stop that.\u201dThe Tory leader also hit out at Labour\u2019s recent pubs U-turn, which saw Rachel Reeves slash business rates by 15%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">\u201cWe have said that we should abolish business rates for small businesses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">\u201cWe don&#8217;t want to see our high streets die.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">\u201cAnother temporary relief, another sticking plaster. This is not what&#8217;s going to create a country fit for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tory leader also hit out at Sir Keir Starmer&#8217;s decision to travel to China. Kemi Badenoch has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[103,61,60,410,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-274412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}