Wes Streeting admits that Reform UK might become Labour’s ‘main challengers’
Thursday’s local elections were bruising for both main parties, and a huge success for Reform UK, who won 677 seats. On Sky News this morning, Trevor Phillips asked Health Secretary Wes Streeting if Reform were taking votes away from Labour’s working class base. Streeting described Reform as a ‘real threat’, and suggested they might be the government’s main opposition by the next election. The health secretary called for Reform to receive more ‘airtime and scrutiny’, arguing that Farage’s healthcare policies are ‘a real threat to the NHS’, and added that Labour had to demonstrate ‘real improvement to people’s lives’ by the next election.
Kemi Badenoch: ‘Four years ago Keir Starmer had his worst result, he is prime minister now’
On the BBC, Laura Kuenssberg told Kemi Badenoch that these could be seen as the Conservatives’ worst local election results ever, and asked if Badenoch was being complacent by saying she needed more time. Badenoch argued that these are ‘politically volatile times’, using Keir Starmer’s trajectory as an example, and said her party would take the ‘slow and steady way’ back to power within four years. Kuenssberg said that the Conservatives’ performance in polls had gone down under Badenoch’s leadership, and pointed out that in some other European countries the traditional right wing party has been usurped. Badenoch claimed she was sure that wouldn’t happen to the Tories, because they are ‘working on a plan’, but admitted that ‘protest is in the air’.
Nigel Huddleston: Kemi Badenoch is an ‘incredible talent’ and will remain as Tory leader
On GB News, Camilla Tominey asked Tory MP Nigel Huddleston why Badenoch wouldn’t follow Nigel Farage and pivot to the right. Huddleston argued that Farage is not conservative, and that Reform’s manifesto had ‘£140bn of tax and spending commitments’. Tominey asked whether the Conservatives would consider a similar immigration approach to Denmark, which has dramatically reduced its number of asylum claims with a series of draconian measures intended to deter migrants, including confiscating valuable possessions from immigrants at the border. Huddleston said ‘everything is on the table’ when it comes to migration policy, and asserted his confidence in Badenoch, describing her as an ‘incredible talent’ who will still be party leader at the next election.
Zia Yusuf: ‘We will use every instrument of power available to us’
In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg, Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf was asked how his party planned to deliver on their campaign promises, such as preventing migrants from being housed in hotels. Yusuf admitted that local powers ‘pale in comparison to the levers of power in Westminster’, but suggested that Reform could use ‘judicial reviews, injunctions… planning laws’ to ‘resist’ the contracts between hotels and the government. Yusuf also argued that asylum seekers could be housed in tents, and said that Reform would publish a plan to deport every migrant who is in the country illegally within their first term in power.
Streeting: I do think there’s been a degree of playing politics [with grooming gangs]’
Leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell has issued an apology after describing the grooming gangs scandal as a ‘dog whistle’ issue in a debate on BBC Radio 4. Political opponents have since called for her resignation, but Wes Streeting defended Powell on Sky News, saying her apology had been accepted, and that she ‘never intended’ to diminish the issue. Streeting said the scandal shouldn’t be a ‘party political knockabout’, and claimed Powell had actually been trying to communicate that. He said Labour were getting to work implementing all the recommendations made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
Ed Davey: ‘I’m proud it’s the Liberal Democrats taking on Reform’
The Liberal Democrats also did well in the local elections, with leader Ed Davey declaring they were ‘the new party of Middle England’ after they took many seats from the Conservatives. On the BBC, Laura Kuenssberg asked Davey if his party’s new branding meant he had given up on more urban areas of the country. Davey said that ‘Middle England’ represented the ‘vast majority’ of the country who want ‘common sense, practical, centrist politics’. He said he was ‘disappointed’ that Labour and the Conservatives were ‘copying’ Reform instead of ‘calling them out for what they stand for’, and claimed that the Liberal Democrats could have success by being anti-Trump, in contrast to Nigel Farage.
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