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“At local level, it’s different."
Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch
BELEAGUERED Tory leader Kemi Badenoch admitted today she would not be against councillors forming coalitions with Reform UK after the coming local elections.
“I’m not going into any coalition whatsoever with Nigel Farage or Reform at national level,” she claimed on Sky News. “At local level, it’s different. [Councillors] have to do what’s right for their community.”
Voters in 23 local authorities in England will go to the polls on Thursday to elect new councillors, alongside mayoral elections in six regions.
Reform is standing more candidates than the Conservatives and Labour, contesting 99.4 per cent of the available seats. The party has consistently polled higher than the Tories in recent months.
But Ms Badenoch insisted she is not worried after one of her party’s major donors, Bassim Haidar, announced he is giving £1 million to Reform.
The Lebanese-national billionaire, who previously donated £700,000 to the Conservatives under Rishi Sunak’s leadership, has thrown his support behind Reform.
“Obviously we don’t want to lose our donors, but we need to make sure that what we are doing is about the public, it’s not just about winning elections. What are we winning for? What is the agenda,” Ms Badenoch rambled.
Once derided by Farage as a ‘fraud,’ Jenrick has defected to Reform, bringing experience and political ruthlessness to the populist right — and raising the unsettling prospect of a Farage-led movement with a seasoned operative pulling the strings, says ANDREW MURRAY
Every Starmer boast about removing asylum-seekers probably wins Reform another seat while Labour loses more voters to Lib Dems, Greens and nationalists than to the far right — the disaster facing Labour is the leadership’s fault, writes DIANE ABBOTT MP
