New Tory leader faces budget challenge

The British government has made an immediate challenge to the new leader of the opposition Conservative Party by telling her to back its plans for increased borrowing and taxation announced in last Wednesday's budget.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves threw down the gauntlet to Kemi Badenoch as soon as she was announced as the winner of the ballot, held by Conservative Party grassroots members, to succeed Rishi Sunak as leader.

In his parliamentary response to the budget speech made on Oct 30, one of his final acts as leader, Sunak criticized the Labour Party for breaking promises and imposing punitive taxes.

But in an interview with the Observer newspaper published on Sunday, Reeves said of successor: "If Kemi Badenoch opposes this budget, then she has to tell the country if she opposes investment to cut (hospital) waiting lists, investment to recruit teachers and investment to build critical infrastructure.

Labour has made its choices, now the Tories need to make theirs."
On Saturday, it was announced that Badenoch had beaten rival former minister of state for immigration Robert Jenrick by nearly 54,000 votes to 41,000 to become the fourth woman to lead the Conservatives, after Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss.

In her acceptance speech, Badenoch, who was business secretary in the Sunak government, said the party had to take on board the lessons from its resounding defeat at the general election in July.

"Our party is critical to the success of our country, but to be heard, we have to be honest," she said. "Honest about the fact that we made mistakes, honest about the fact that we let standards slip. The time has come to tell the truth."

The 44-year-old was born in Britain but grew up in Nigeria and the United States before returning to the United Kingdom at 16, and studied computer engineering at university.

She is an outspoken right-winger, who is seen as unlikely to win back the support of more moderate former Conservative voters.

Badenoch has described herself as a "net-zero skeptic but not a climate change skeptic", and recently declared herself a "huge fan" of billionaire businessman and major Donald Trump supporter Elon Musk, calling him a "fantastic thing for freedom of speech".

She was criticized by the National Autistic Society for comments about people with the condition, which is a recognized disability, receiving what she called "better treatment" and "economic privileges and protections".

The charity called her remarks "not only offensive to autistic people but detached from reality and (demonstrating) a fundamental lack of understanding of autism and disability."

Her comments that maternity pay had "gone too far" because of the demands it made on tax payers also generated negative publicity. In a Daily Telegraph newspaper article about immigration, she said: "we cannot be naive and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not."