UK politics live: Badenoch admits Tory Brexit mistakes, saying party had ‘no plan for growth outside EU’

Kemi Badenoch admits Tories made mistakes on Brexit, saying party had ‘no plan for growth outside EU’
Good morning. Keir Starmer is in Ukraine and, as Pippa Crerar and Luke Harding report, he is signing a 100-year partnership deal with the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
We will be covering the trip in detail in a live blog here.
Back in the UK it is also an important day for Kemi Badenoch, who is delivering a major speech on the subject “Rebuilding Trust”. She has been leader of the Conservative party for just over three months, and so far she has not had much success. Her performances in the Commons have been mediocre, her pronouncements on policy and values have either been predictable and reductive, and sometimes just bizarre, and she is being outplayed by Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK party is hoovering up her vote and is now level pegging with the Tories in the polls.
One problem Badenoch has is that she is leader of a party that suffered its worst election result in 200 years because its record in office was generally seen to be terrible. Badenoch has often said that the party made mistakes while it was in power, but she has not done much to disown former leaders and she has not managed to persuade voters yet that she represents a radical break with the past.
Today’s speech seems to be an attempt to change that. On the basis of the fairly lengthy extracts released overnight, it contains her strongest criticism yet of the mistakes made by the past government (of which she was part – but only at cabinet level from September 2022).
Here is the key passage.
I will acknowledge the Conservative Party made mistakes …
We announced that we would leave the European Union before we had a plan for growth outside the EU.
We made it the law that we would deliver net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. And only then did we start thinking about how we would do that.
We announced that we would lower immigration, but immigration kept going up.
These mistakes were made because we told people what they wanted to hear first and then tried to work it out later.
That is going to stop under my leadership. If we are going to turn our country around, we’re going to have to say some things that aren’t easy to hear.
The admission that the Tories failed on immigration sounds largely like a rehash of a speech Badenoch gave in November. She has frequently criticised net zero targets in the past. But what she is saying about Brexit does seem to be new.
Last year she criticised the fact that the last Conservative government organised a referendum on Brexit without a plan for implementing it if people voted to leave. This was a relatively bold thing to say, because it was obviously a rebuke to David Cameron, and at the time he was back in cabinet as foreign secretary. But comments like this were popular with the pro-Brexit Tory mainstream, who by that point were suspicious of Cameron.
Today Badenoch seems to be saying something slightly different – that Brexit went wrong not just because there was no plan in 2016, but because there was no plan in 2020. This means she’s also blaming Theresa May for Brexit failures, and probably Boris Johnson too. We will find out this afternoon quite how far she is willing to go in condemning Johnson, who is still popular with Tory members, but it seems to be a new approach.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Keir Starmer is in Kyiv, where he is meeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, and signing a 100-year partnership deal.
9.30am: Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
Morning: Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry as part of the module covering vaccines.
10.30am: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, gives a speech on British leadership and links with Europe.
Noon: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions at Holyrood.
1.30pm: Kemi Badenoch delivers a speech on restoring trust.
Afternoon: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, holds a meeting with regulators, urging them to do more to promote growth.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
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Key events
Labour MP Sarah Champion welcomes reports that Yvette Cooper to announce support for local inquiries into grooming gangs
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, is expected to announce “a plan for government-backed local inquiries into grooming gangs” in her statement to MPs later, ITV News is reporting.
It says she will also announce new directions for police about how they should investigate cases of child sexual exploitation.
The news has been welcomed by the Labour MP Sarah Champion, who has been calling for a national inquiry, but one involving local inquiries feeding into an overarching national one. She posted this on social media.
Wow! Looks like the Government is accepting my 5 point plan to prevent child abuse and expose cover-ups over Grooming gangs! Statement approx 2pm – I’ll be all over the details!!
By amazing coincidence, the Cooper statement will take place around the same time as the Kemi Badenoch speech. (It might have started at exactly the same time if the David Lammy statement on the Middle East had just lasted the usual hour – but that one has already lasted 100 minutes, and is still running.)
Labour have not been spooked by Badenoch’s performance as Tory leader. But they not entirely complacent either, and if a Cooper announcement on a topic popular with GB News, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail etc means those outfits devote less of their reporting space to the Tory leader, the Labour spin machine may regard that as a good thing.
UK should use offer of state visit to get Trump to attend pro-Ukraine summit, says Davey
Peter Walker
Peter Walker is the Guardian’s senior political correspondent.
The UK should offer Donald Trump a state visit on the condition he agrees to a sit-down summit with Volodymyr Zelenskyy as part of an openly “transactional” relationship with the returning US president, Ed Davey has said.
In a speech which also saw the Lib Dem leader call for the UK to seek a new customs union with the EU to help insulate itself from the potential impacts of Trump, Davey said that while the American president could not be trusted, he could also very much not be ignored.
The reality is, unfortunately, very clear: the incoming Trump administration is a threat to peace and prosperity for the UK, across Europe and around the world.
For the next four years, the UK cannot depend on the presence of the United States to be a reliable partner on security, defence or the economy.
The only way for the UK to deal with Trump, he argued would be from a position of strength, requiring both closer links to Europe and, when interacting with the president, to do so “with our eyes wider to the kind of man he is,” Davey argued.
He’s transactional, so let’s treat him that way.
The good news is we have leverage. We have something Trump desperately wants – a state visit, the pageantry of Buckingham Palace, a banquet with the King.
We all know he craves it. So I say we give it to him, but only if he delivers what we need first for Britain and Europe’s defence and security.
This would involve Trump agreeing to attend a UK-convened summit with Zelenskyy and other European leaders to pave a future for Ukraine, including discussion of how to use frozen Russian assets to pay for Ukrainian weapons.
Elsewhere in the speech, which marked a renewed focus on post-Brexit links and international affairs following a Liberal Democrat election campaign focused largely on domestic issues, Davey slammed Keir Starmer for what he called a vastly cautious approach to Europe.
The prime minister has at least recognised The need to reset our relationship with the EU. So far, I’m afraid that only seems to amount to saying no more politely than the Conservatives.
As well as calling for talks to begin on the UK seeking a bespoke customs union deal with Brussels, with a plan to complete this by 2030, Davey also called for immediate action on a reciprocal youth mobility scheme with EU member states.
Reform UK says Mike Amesbury should resign as MP after guilty plea
Reform UK says Mike Amesbury should resign as an MP after pleading guilty to assault today. (See 10.48am.) Zia Yusuf, the Reform chair, said:
Today Mike Amesbury has pleaded guilty to assault.
The great people of Runcorn deserve far better than this.
We call on Mike Amesbury to do the honourable thing and resign immediately so a byelection can be held.
Labour claims Badenoch ‘doing exact opposite’ of restoring trust
The Labour party has already sent out two press releases about the Kemi Badenoch speech, which is not starting for another hour or so.
One of them is a briefing noted headed “5 reasons Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives can’t ‘rebuild trust’”. For the record, here are the five headline reasons given by Labour. (The full briefing is a lot longer.)
1) The Conservatives have continued to make unfunded commitments despite crashing the economy when in government
2) Clinging to discredited ideas risks groundhog day for the Tory open-border experiment that delivered record migration
3) Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet is packed full of the politicians who delivered 14 years of failure
4) The Conservatives have continued the chaos and infighting that led to the Tories losing the trust of the British people
5) Kemi Badenoch says personal responsibility is for other Tories, not her
And Labour has also issued this statement on the speech from Ellie Reeves, the Labour chair.
The public rightly lost trust in the Conservatives after 14 long years of failure in government. Far from rebuilding trust, Kemi Badenoch is doing the exact opposite. Another speech, but no apology for her role in Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget that crashed the economy and left a £22bn black hole in the public finances.
The Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch have nothing to offer in opposition apart from recklessly continuing to make unfunded spending commitments and overseeing yet more Conservative chaos and infighting. The Tories haven’t listened and they haven’t learned.
Staff at sixth form colleges in England to strike over pay

Richard Adams
Richard Adams is the Guardian’s education editor.
Thirty-two sixth form colleges across England will be hit by more strikes over a pay disparity between staff employed by academies and those in standalone colleges.
The National Education Union (NEU) said around 2,000 of its members will walk out on 29 January, 6 and 7 February, adding a further three days to the seven days of strikes already held as students prepare for A-levels and BTec assessments this spring.
The dispute centres around the time lag between sixth form college staff receiving the full 5.5% pay increase from April that school sixth form teachers received last September, costing college staff hundreds of pounds in lost earnings.
Daniel Kebede, the NEU’s general secretary, said:
We will never accept a situation in which college teachers in non-academised colleagues are paid less than their academised peers for identical work. It is absurd and blatantly unfair to under-fund sixth form colleges in this way, risking lasting damage to longstanding collective bargaining arrangements.
This week the NASUWT union opened a strike ballot among its 1,800 sixth form college members, warning that further strikes could take place.
Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said:
We cannot make a 5.5% pay offer for the whole year, because the government has not provided funding for the whole year. Students will pay the price for this through further disruption to their education.
Sixth form college staff have been given a 3.5% pay increase until March, with the full 5.5% increase from April. As a result, a college teacher on £40,000 a year will be nearly £500 worse off than their peers in school sixth forms.
My colleague Peter Walker, who wrote our preview story about Ed Davey’s speech, was Blueskying from it as it was being delivered this morning. Here are his thoughts.
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There’s a case to be made that on two important and connected political issues – how to deal with Donald Trump and the aftermath of Brexit – the Lib Dems are more aligned with what pols show voters actually want than ether Labour or the Tories.
It’s an interesting shift also for the Lib Dems who slightly gave up talking about Brexit after the 2019 election. Their 2024 manifesto called only for closer ties with Europe, making no specific pledges.
Of course, even a UK government saying they wanted to be in the customs union wouldn’t necessarily make it happen.
I’m at Ed Davey’s speech, which is being held at some co-working space with the chairs arranged in the round, rather than rows. I would say this is getting close to peak Lib Dem, but I’m experienced enough in such matters to know that this is a journey, not a destination
Making his speech, Davey says we are about to enter a four-year period where the US cannot be relied on as a partner. The UK must thus “step up”, he says, and forge closer links with Europe. But, he adds, that does not mean Trump can or should be ignored.
Davey says that while Keir Starmer recognises the need to reset links with the EU, at the moment all this means is “saying no more politely than the Conservatives”. He calls for talks on joining the customs union, as outlined in the overnight speech trail. He also calls for a youth mobility scheme.
Davey says Trump should be dealt with on a “transactional” basis, “with our eyes wide open to the kind of man he is” – offer him a UK state visit *only* if Trump also agrees to a sit-down summit with Zelenskiy over support for Ukraine.
Davey has thus far taken questions from not just broadly sympathetic papers (eg me) but also the Mail, Telegraph and Sun. Let’s see if Kemi Badenoch’s range of questioners is as broad when she gives her speech this afternoon.
Badenoch’s ‘rebuilding trust’ speech – summary and analysis from what we know so far
Here are more lines from the “Rebuilding Trust” speech that Kemi Badenoch will deliver later. (See 9.36am.) They came from the extracts sent out by CCHQ in advance. I’ve included some analysis.
Politicians across all parties have not told the truth about this and instead keep prescribing solutions that are actually making things worse.
This problem is broader than one party, one leader, or one period of government. Generations of leaders and entire ranks of senior managers have been trying and failing for a long time. Many have not been honest with the public about the challenges we face. And others have not even been honest with themselves.
Analysis: At one level, it is hard to argue with this. For example, at the last election the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and other economists, were warning almost every day that the next government would have to either raises taxes or cut public services. The Conservatives and Labour both refused to accept this – and Labour is now claiming the state of the public finances came as a surprise.
But talking about politicians ‘not telling the truth’ can quite easily take you into deep state/conspirarcy theory/tinfoil hat territory. It is not clear yet how far Badenoch will push back against this.
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She will claim that, unlike Keir Starmer, she is willing to admit her party’s mistakes.
The public will never trust politicians unless we can accept our mistakes.
Labour are making a lot of mistakes. But the difference between me and Keir Starmer is that he doesn’t believe he’s ever made a mistake.
I will acknowledge the Conservative party made mistakes.
Analysis: In one respect, this is totally wrong. Starmer has gone much further in admitting Labour made mistakes before he became leader than Badenoch has in relation to her party. Starmer threw his predecessor out of the party. Asked if Boris Johnson or Liz Truss should be allowed to return to parliament, Badenoch has never said no.
If she is talking about Starmer’s willingness to admit personal errors, Badenoch has a point. Giving evidence to the liaison committee at the end of last year, Starmer would not identify any mistakes he had made as PM. But Badenoch is also terrible at admitting her own errors. In an interview last year she claimed: “I never have gaffes.”
Analysis: Only three? What about the state of the NHS, or the criminal justice system, or train services, or growth, or productivity, or university finances, or adult social care, or welfare costs, or the state of the armed forces? The list goes on and on.
Analysis: This is true, but voters are not clear yet what Badenoch’s leadership entails. Today’s speech might help.
For the next four years and beyond we are going to be telling the British people the truth, even when it’s difficult to hear.
The truth about the mistakes we made
The truth about the problems we face.
And the truth about the actions we must take to get ourselves out of this mess.
Analysis: That is going to require a lot more truth telling about Tory failures. See above.
Analysis: And why is that? If Badenoch ever gets round to delivering a ‘time to tell the truth’ speech about Brexit, there is going to be a lot to cover that Badenoch has so far never addressed.
Labour are having even worse problems than we did, because they announced policy without a plan.
Policies without a plan are not policies … they’re just announcements.
That’s why Labour are struggling. It’s the old cliche that “failing to plan, is planning to fail.”
Because when you haven’t worked out what you’re going to do in opposition, you will accept whatever you’re given in government.
Analysis: Starmer has published lots of plans. But there are plenty of non-Tory commentators who also believe there are many policy areas where Labour’s reform plans are either vague or untested (eg promoting growth), or thin/non-existent (eg schools, tuition fees or adult social care).
That’s why Rachel Reeves announced mad and bad ideas on snatching winter fuel and taxing family farms.
Those options were presented to us, time and time again by officials, and we rejected them time and time again because they would hurt so many people for so little benefit.
The chancellor took them because she has no ideas of her own.
Analysis: Again, this is an argument that has been made by non-Tory commentators.
The schools bill going through parliament now has one or two bits on safeguarding that may be good … the rest of it is worse than garbage. It is pure vandalism. The new Labour government will not fix any of the problems we have faced for decades. Because they wasted their time in opposition.
Analysis: Some Labour MPs also believe the plans in the schools bills for academies are a mistake. But when MPs were debating the bill last week, and the Tories could have focused on this argument, Badenoch instead chose to table a reasoned amendment that turned the whole debate into an argument about the case for a grooming gang inquiry.
Mike Amesbury will not be readmitted to the parliamentary party following his guilty plea today. (See 10.48am.) A Labour spokesperson said:
It is right that Mike Amesbury has taken responsibility for his unacceptable actions. He was rightly suspended by the Labour party following the announcement of the police investigation. We cannot comment further whilst legal proceedings are still ongoing.
It is understood that Amesbury will not have the whip returned and is no longer a member of the party.
Mike Amesbury MP pleads guilty to assault
The suspended Labour MP Mike Amesbury has pleaded guilty to assaulting a man in the street, PA Media reports. PA says:
The Runcorn and Helsby MP appeared at Chester Magistrates’ Court on Thursday accused of attacking 45-year-old Paul Fellows in Main Street in Frodsham, Cheshire, which was reported to officers at 2.48am on October 26 last year.
Amesbury was suspended from the Labour Party after footage emerged which appeared to show him punching a man.
He now sits in Parliament as an Independent.
The 55-year-old was summonsed to court to face a charge of section 39 assault after a file was passed to prosecutors on 29 October.
It is expected that this will lead to a byelection in Runcorn and Helsby, where Labour had a majority of almost 15,000 over Reform UK at the general election.
Amesbury has not been sentenced yet. Under the Recall of MPs Act 2015, the recall process kicks in if an MP gets a custodial sentence, even if suspended, or if they get suspended from the Commons for at least 10 sitting days. Amesbury has not been subjected to the Commons disciplinary processs yet, but that is likely to happen once the legal process is over.
Alternatively, Amesbury may decide to resign.
Lucy Powell, the leader of the Commons, is making a Commons statement now about next week’s business. This will run for about an hour.
After that, there are three ministerial statements.
Around 11.30am: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, on the Middle East.
Around 12.30pm: Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, on the government’s response to the first report from the Covid inquiry.
Around 1.30m: Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, on child exploitation and abuse.
UK should seek new customs union with EU, says Lib Dem leader Ed Davey
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is also giving a major speech this morning. Here is Peter Walker’s story from the preview of what he is going to say.
Pressure eases on Rachel Reeves as UK economy grows by 0.1% in November
The UK economy grew by 0.1% in November, reversing a 0.1% drop in the previous month and easing pressure on embattled chancellor Rachel Reeves, Phillip Inman reports.
Starmer confirms ‘100-year partnership’ between UK and Ukraine on visit to Kyiv
Keir Starmer is confirming what Downing Street is describing as a 100-year partnership with Ukaine on his visit to Kyiv today. This is what No 10 is saying about the deal in a news release.
The UK and Ukraine will sign a historic partnership, as the prime minister travels to the country to meet President Zelenskyy.
The unbreakable bonds between the UK and Ukraine will be formalised through the landmark new 100-year partnership between the two countries, broadening and deepening the relationship across defence and non-military areas and enabling closer community links.
From working together on the world stage to breaking down barriers to trade and growth and nurturing cultural links, the mutually beneficial partnership will see the UK and Ukraine advocate for each other to renew, rebuild and reform for generations to come.
The partnership underpins the prime minister’s steadfast leadership on Ukraine as his government continues to provide support. Spanning nine key pillars, it will harness the innovation, strength and resilience that Ukraine has shown in its defence against Russia’s illegal and barbaric invasion; and foster it to support long-term security and growth for both our countries. The treaty and political declaration, which form the 100-year partnership, will be laid in parliament in the coming weeks.
Yohannes Lowe has more coverage on his Ukraine war live blog.
Kemi Badenoch admits Tories made mistakes on Brexit, saying party had ‘no plan for growth outside EU’
Good morning. Keir Starmer is in Ukraine and, as Pippa Crerar and Luke Harding report, he is signing a 100-year partnership deal with the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
We will be covering the trip in detail in a live blog here.
Back in the UK it is also an important day for Kemi Badenoch, who is delivering a major speech on the subject “Rebuilding Trust”. She has been leader of the Conservative party for just over three months, and so far she has not had much success. Her performances in the Commons have been mediocre, her pronouncements on policy and values have either been predictable and reductive, and sometimes just bizarre, and she is being outplayed by Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK party is hoovering up her vote and is now level pegging with the Tories in the polls.
One problem Badenoch has is that she is leader of a party that suffered its worst election result in 200 years because its record in office was generally seen to be terrible. Badenoch has often said that the party made mistakes while it was in power, but she has not done much to disown former leaders and she has not managed to persuade voters yet that she represents a radical break with the past.
Today’s speech seems to be an attempt to change that. On the basis of the fairly lengthy extracts released overnight, it contains her strongest criticism yet of the mistakes made by the past government (of which she was part – but only at cabinet level from September 2022).
Here is the key passage.
I will acknowledge the Conservative Party made mistakes …
We announced that we would leave the European Union before we had a plan for growth outside the EU.
We made it the law that we would deliver net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. And only then did we start thinking about how we would do that.
We announced that we would lower immigration, but immigration kept going up.
These mistakes were made because we told people what they wanted to hear first and then tried to work it out later.
That is going to stop under my leadership. If we are going to turn our country around, we’re going to have to say some things that aren’t easy to hear.
The admission that the Tories failed on immigration sounds largely like a rehash of a speech Badenoch gave in November. She has frequently criticised net zero targets in the past. But what she is saying about Brexit does seem to be new.
Last year she criticised the fact that the last Conservative government organised a referendum on Brexit without a plan for implementing it if people voted to leave. This was a relatively bold thing to say, because it was obviously a rebuke to David Cameron, and at the time he was back in cabinet as foreign secretary. But comments like this were popular with the pro-Brexit Tory mainstream, who by that point were suspicious of Cameron.
Today Badenoch seems to be saying something slightly different – that Brexit went wrong not just because there was no plan in 2016, but because there was no plan in 2020. This means she’s also blaming Theresa May for Brexit failures, and probably Boris Johnson too. We will find out this afternoon quite how far she is willing to go in condemning Johnson, who is still popular with Tory members, but it seems to be a new approach.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Keir Starmer is in Kyiv, where he is meeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, and signing a 100-year partnership deal.
9.30am: Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
Morning: Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry as part of the module covering vaccines.
10.30am: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, gives a speech on British leadership and links with Europe.
Noon: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions at Holyrood.
1.30pm: Kemi Badenoch delivers a speech on restoring trust.
Afternoon: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, holds a meeting with regulators, urging them to do more to promote growth.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.