Badenoch Would Rather Fight a Second Election Than Deal With Reform
Asked what she would do in a hung parliament, the Conservative leader said: “If there is a hung parliament, then we can have another election. We had this in 1974.” Pressed on whether she would genuinely prefer a second election to a coalition with Reform, she replied: “I would rather have another election, yes.” She declined to confirm whether tomorrow’s speech will contain an inheritance tax cut.
The 1974 precedent is doing a lot of work. Both elections that year produced governments without a stable majority, and the second was called within eight months by a prime minister seeking one — which is a thin advertisement for the strategy, but it is at least a real one. The remark matters because it closes off, in public and on the record, the arrangement that most arithmetic currently points to. On inheritance tax she defended a cut against the objection that only one estate in twenty pays it: “Inheritance tax right now has dragged in a lot of people who weren’t covered before. The wealthiest people don’t pay it, they have all these trusts and so on. It really affects the middle class.” On the prime minister she was dismissive — “he’s not applying to be everybody’s boyfriend” — and on reports of a half-empty hall she told Channel 5 she had “absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. This conference is buzzing.” Robert Jenrick, speaking for Reform, spent the afternoon attacking her from the other direction over the state pension. Her leader’s speech is tomorrow, and she gave two different times for it in two different interviews. Watch whether the inheritance tax cut and the savings plan appear in the same speech.