Badenoch, who has led the Conservatives since November 2024, faces a steep task in turning her party’s fortunes around as she begins the new year.<\/p>\n
Tory poll ratings have improved only marginally in recent months, despite her increasingly winning plaudits for her performances holding the government to account in Parliament.<\/p>\n
But her party is having to compete with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK to capitalise on Labour’s unpopularity.<\/p>\n
In her interview with Kuenssberg, Badenoch continued recent attacks on both Labour and Reform’s economic policies, accusing them of offering “two different types of authoritarianism” and “two different types of grievance”.<\/p>\n
She dismissed the prospect of doing a deal with Farage’s party to avoid splitting support among voters whose views are traditionally to the right of Labour, adding that Reform “wants to do the same things that Labour wants to do”.<\/p>\n
She highlighted the party’s welfare stance, after Reform said last year it favoured lifting the two-child benefits cap<\/a> for working British couples.<\/p>\n She also criticised Reform’s policy of offering government investment in oil and gas drilling in return for a taxpayer stake in projects, adding it showed many in Farage’s party favoured “using the state to control things”.<\/p>\n