Kemi Badenoch condones Tories forming pacts with Reform UK if necessary to take control of councils
Good morning. There are three weeks until the local elections in England and, with parliament in recess, the party leaders have time for campaigning out of London. While the main conversation is still dominated by President Trump and his erratic global tariffs policy – Graeme Wearden has the latest developments on his business live blog – there are other things to talk about, and Kemi Badenoch has just given an interview to BBC Breakfast where she condoned Tory councillors doing deals with Reform UK to control local authorities if they do not win a majority.
Asked if she would rule out any deals, at national or local level, between the Conservative party and Reform UK, Badenoch replied:
I have said categorically that I’m not doing deals with Reform. Nigel Farage has said that he wants to destroy the Conservative party. When someone says they want to destroy you, don’t invite them into your house and ask to do a deal.
At local level, we end up with various coalitions. I’ve seen Conservatives go into coalition with Labour, with Liberal Democrats, with independents. You don’t get to have a rerun of an election at local level.
So what I’m telling local leaders across the country is they have to do what is right for the people in their area, and they must stick to conservative principles, make sure that they’re not compromising on our values and on the things that we believe in – sound money, for example, not excessive government intervention.
So local leaders are voted by the people in a particular community. They will have to make the choice about what is right for their councils.
But at national level, no, I was not made leader of the Conservative party to give it away to Reform.
In one respect this is just a statement of normal practice. At local authority level it is not unusual for parties without an overall majority to govern in alliance with other parties – sometimes via a formal coalition, or sometimes via some form of “confidence and supply” deal that involves not voting down the budget.
But national party leaders are normally a bit coy when it comes to approving these arrangements, and under Keir Starmer Labour HQ has sometimes vetoed council pacts with other parties. Badenoch’s comments will give credibility to the Labour claim that Badenoch’s party and Nigel Farage’s are closely aligned. Labour has revealed that 60 Reform UK council candidates are defectors from the Conservative party. And last week Labour ran an online advert saying:
Reform and the Tories are closer than you think. No plans, no solutions, just more chaos.
Labour is bringing change to Britain. Vote Labour on Thursday 1 May.
It was accompanied by this image.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: NHS England publishes its monthly performance figures.
9.30am: The Home Office is publishing its annual report on cyber breaches.
Morning: Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, are on a visit to promote plans to reopen Doncaster Sheffield airport.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is doing visits in the north of England.
11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is on a campaign visit in Derbyshire. In the afternoon he will be in Staffordshire.
Early afternoon: Starmer is on a visit in Cambridgeshire with Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to promote the government’s plans for more foot patrols by police at busy times.
2pm (UK time): John Healey, the defence secretary, and his French counterpart Sébastien Lecornu chair a meeting in Brussels of defence ministers from the 30-odd “coalition of the willing” countries offering to help guarantee Ukraine’s security in the event of a peace deal.
I’m afraid that, for the next few weeks or months, on most days staff shortages mean that comments will only be open on the blog between 10am and 3pm.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line, when comments are open, 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.bsky.social. 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.
Key events
Lib Dems claim Reform UK and Tories have ‘merged in all but name’ with Badenoch as Conservative leader
The Liberal Democrats have claimed that the Tories and Reform UK have “merged in all but name” with Kemi Badenoch as Conservative leader. In a statement responding to Badenoch’s BBC Breakfast interview (see 9.34am), Daisy Cooper, the deputy Lib Dem leader, said:
Badenoch may have ruled out at a pact with Farage but the reality is the Conservatives and Reform have merged in all but name under her leadership.
You couldn’t put a cigarette paper between Badenoch and Farage when it comes to their policies. It’s clear the Conservatives have totally abandoned the centre ground.
Wes Streeting welcomes NHS England figures saying 3.1m extra hospital appointments have taken place since election
The NHS England news release on today’s monthly performanc figures focuses on the fact that 3.1m “additional appointments” have taken place since the general election. It says:
The NHS has delivered more than 3.1 million additional appointments since July 2024 and hit the ambitious faster diagnosis standard for cancer, new figures show today.
Monthly performance data shows that there were more than 3.1 million additional appointments delivered in the seven months from July 2024 (3,106,424 elective operations, outpatient appointments and diagnostic tests up until January 2025) meaning that the overall waiting list fell for the sixth month in a row in February.
The backlog dropped to 7.4 million with a reduction of 26,000 compared to the previous month. The estimated number of patients waiting in February stands at 6.24 million.
Thanks to the efforts of NHS staff, more than four fifths (80.2%) of people received the all clear or a definitive cancer diagnosis within four weeks – the highest proportion on record.
And it quotes Wes Streeting, the health secretary, saying:
We made a promise to the British public that we would create 2 million more appointments for patients in our first year – today we’ve already dwarfed this target and have reached 3.1 million additional appointments in the first 6 months.
Today’s data also shows we have cut the waiting list for the sixth month in a row, by a total 219,000 since July, with fewer patients waiting over 18 weeks which can have significant benefits on their health outcomes.
Hospital waiting list falls for six month in a row, down to 7.4m, NHS England figures show
The waiting list for routine hospital treatment in England has fallen for the sixth month in a row, PA Media reports. PA says:
An estimated 7.40 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of February, relating to 6.24 million patients – down from 7.43 million treatments and 6.25 million patients at the end of January, NHS England says.
The list hit a record high in September 2023, with 7.77 million treatments and 6.50 million patients.
This chart from today’s NHS England release shows how the waiting list has grown over the past decade.
England’s ‘complex’ health and care system harming patients, report says
Navigating England’s “complex” health and care system is “extremely difficult” and carers and patients are experiencing burnout, distress and harm as a result, a damning report says. Andrew Gregory has the story.
Ellie Reeves, the Labour chair, has put out a statement claiming the Kemi Badenoch interview on BBC Breakfast (see 9.34am) shows that voting Tory will deliver Reform UK policies. She says:
Now it’s crystal clear: if you vote Reform or Conservative, you’re opening the door to more of the Tory chaos that held our country back over the past 14 years.
Kemi Badenoch and her Conservative party left our NHS at breaking point and Nigel Farage wants to make patients pay for healthcare when they’re sick. Just imagine what they’d do together.
Yvette Cooper says Trump tariffs U-turn shows why PM has been right to respond to him in calm, ‘steady’ manner
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, was the government voice on the morning news shows. As Rajeev Syal, Mimi Ibrahim and Vikram Dodd report, she is announcing that police officers on foot will patrol every busy neighbourhood in England and Wales at peak times.
But, inevitably, she was asked about the government’s reaction to President Trump’s tariffs U-turn last night. In line with standard No 10 policy, she did not criticise the president. “We are not keeping a running commentary on different trade negotiations, on the different approaches that other governments are taking,” she said. But she did argue that the U-turn (my term, not hers) vindicated Keir Starmer’s decision to respond in a calm and considered way to what Trump has been doing. She told the Today programme:
I think it just actually reinforces the strategy and the approach that we’re taking, which is to be pragmatic, to take this steady course rather than to get buffeted around from day to day or getting into the sort of running commentaries and reactions.
Gordon Brown calls for ‘economic coalition of the willing’ to tackle Trump tariffs
Gordon Brown has called for an “economic coalition of the willing” to respond to Donald Trump’s tariffs with coordinated economic policies, including a reduction of interest rates, Jessica Elgot reports. Here is her news story.
Here is Brown’s Guardian article making this argument.
And here is an extract.
On Monday, Keir Starmer warned that the world will never be the same again, and reminded us that “attempting to manage crises without fundamental change just leads to managed decline”. He is right. As I learned in the financial crisis of 2008, global problems require globally coordinated solutions. We need a bold, international response that measures up to the scale of the emergency. In the same way that, to his great credit, the prime minister has been building a coalition in defence of Ukraine, we need an economic coalition of the willing: like-minded global leaders who believe that, in an interdependent world, we have to coordinate economic policies across continents if we are to safeguard jobs and living standards.
The immediate challenge is to mitigate the supply-side shocks caused by the Trump tariff wall. As Rachel Reeves is proposing, we need to keep world trade moving. No two crises are ever the same, but offering extended credit to exporting and importing firms was central to the global response as trade collapsed in 2009. We also have to remind China that if it is to present itself as a champion of free trade, it is in its interests to focus more on expanding domestic consumption than flooding the world’s markets with cut-price goods it cannot now sell in the US.
Kemi Badenoch condones Tories forming pacts with Reform UK if necessary to take control of councils
Good morning. There are three weeks until the local elections in England and, with parliament in recess, the party leaders have time for campaigning out of London. While the main conversation is still dominated by President Trump and his erratic global tariffs policy – Graeme Wearden has the latest developments on his business live blog – there are other things to talk about, and Kemi Badenoch has just given an interview to BBC Breakfast where she condoned Tory councillors doing deals with Reform UK to control local authorities if they do not win a majority.
Asked if she would rule out any deals, at national or local level, between the Conservative party and Reform UK, Badenoch replied:
I have said categorically that I’m not doing deals with Reform. Nigel Farage has said that he wants to destroy the Conservative party. When someone says they want to destroy you, don’t invite them into your house and ask to do a deal.
At local level, we end up with various coalitions. I’ve seen Conservatives go into coalition with Labour, with Liberal Democrats, with independents. You don’t get to have a rerun of an election at local level.
So what I’m telling local leaders across the country is they have to do what is right for the people in their area, and they must stick to conservative principles, make sure that they’re not compromising on our values and on the things that we believe in – sound money, for example, not excessive government intervention.
So local leaders are voted by the people in a particular community. They will have to make the choice about what is right for their councils.
But at national level, no, I was not made leader of the Conservative party to give it away to Reform.
In one respect this is just a statement of normal practice. At local authority level it is not unusual for parties without an overall majority to govern in alliance with other parties – sometimes via a formal coalition, or sometimes via some form of “confidence and supply” deal that involves not voting down the budget.
But national party leaders are normally a bit coy when it comes to approving these arrangements, and under Keir Starmer Labour HQ has sometimes vetoed council pacts with other parties. Badenoch’s comments will give credibility to the Labour claim that Badenoch’s party and Nigel Farage’s are closely aligned. Labour has revealed that 60 Reform UK council candidates are defectors from the Conservative party. And last week Labour ran an online advert saying:
Reform and the Tories are closer than you think. No plans, no solutions, just more chaos.
Labour is bringing change to Britain. Vote Labour on Thursday 1 May.
It was accompanied by this image.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: NHS England publishes its monthly performance figures.
9.30am: The Home Office is publishing its annual report on cyber breaches.
Morning: Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, are on a visit to promote plans to reopen Doncaster Sheffield airport.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is doing visits in the north of England.
11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is on a campaign visit in Derbyshire. In the afternoon he will be in Staffordshire.
Early afternoon: Starmer is on a visit in Cambridgeshire with Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to promote the government’s plans for more foot patrols by police at busy times.
2pm (UK time): John Healey, the defence secretary, and his French counterpart Sébastien Lecornu chair a meeting in Brussels of defence ministers from the 30-odd “coalition of the willing” countries offering to help guarantee Ukraine’s security in the event of a peace deal.
I’m afraid that, for the next few weeks or months, on most days staff shortages mean that comments will only be open on the blog between 10am and 3pm.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line, when comments are open, 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.bsky.social. 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.
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