Badenoch warns Brits aren’t ‘wealthy’ and should begin ‘dwelling inside our means’ as she admits Tory failures on Brexit, immigration and Net Zero – however says Labour are repeating blunders and ‘suffocating’ enterprise

Kemi Badenoch warned Brits they are not ‘rich’ and must start ‘living within our means’ today in a straight-talking speech.

The Conservative leader laid out ‘mistakes’ her party made, including on Brexit, immigration and Net Zero, as she promised to be ‘honest’ with the country.

Sounding alarm about the ‘complacency that Britain will always be wealthy’, she accused Labour of repeating many of the same blunders the Tories made in government. 

And she railed at Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves for ‘suffocating’ enterprise with high taxes and red tape.

Ms Badenoch said ‘real Conservatism’ was the only way to ensure that tomorrow would be ‘richer, better and safer’. 

The Opposition chief is battling to restore Tory fortunes after the disastrous election saw Keir Starmer rack up a massive majority.

Reform has also emerged as a major threat with polls suggesting support for Nigel Farage‘s outfit is growing. 

But Ms Badenoch flatly rejected any suggestion of a merger before the next election.

‘Nigel Farage says he wants to destroy the Conservative Party. Why on earth would we merge with that?,’ she said.

Earlier this week a poll put Reform just a single point behind Labour.

YouGov research put Nigel Farage‘s outfit on 25 per cent, having leapfrogged the Tories on 22 per cent.

Although surveys this far out from an election can be difficult to interpret – and more than a quarter of those asked did not opt for any party – such figures would put Reform on track for a major breakthrough.

Electoral Calculus projections suggest Mr Farage would be in charge of more than 100 MPs, with Labour still the largest party on 287 seats – but short of an overall majority.

Stressing the Conservatives are under new leadership, Ms Badenoch said: ‘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.’

In a frank assessment of what went wrong under her predecessors – from David Cameron to Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – Ms Badenoch said: ‘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.’

Ms Badenoch said that she wanted to ‘start with our problems’. 

‘We think we are rich, but we are living off the inheritance that previous generations left behind, a complacency that Britain will always be wealthy, and a refusal to live within our means,’ she said.

‘We owe it to that next generation to leave an inheritance for them and not mortgage their future to make our lives more comfortable, and that will demand the kind of tough, soul-searching conversations we’re not having right now.

‘Energy supply is vulnerable, more vulnerable than ever, and our energy is far, far too expensive when it should be secure, cheap, plentiful.

‘Demography is destiny. People are having fewer children. Our society is getting older. We are living longer and needing more support towards the end of our lives. Look at productivity. A shrinking group of people are working to support an ever growing number of those who are unable or unwilling to work.’

Ms Badenoch said the decline had to ‘stop because the dream of every generation, that our children can have a better future than we did, is slowly dying’. 

‘It’s dying because as our problems have got more urgent, our politics has got less serious,’ she said.

‘Since July, there has been more discussion in parliament on Oasis tickets than on our 2.7 trillion pound debt pile. That has to stop.

‘The young people I speak to are deeply despondent that their country is unable to provide them better opportunities, let alone guarantee health, wealth and prosperity.’

Speaking to GB News earlier this week, the Tory leader said it was important to examine the backgrounds of those implicated in the grooming gangs scandal.

She suggested they were ‘people with a very poor background, a sort of peasant background, very, very rural, almost cut off from even the home origin countries that they might have been in’.

Labour chairwoman Ellie Reeves accused the Tory leader of being in ‘complete denial’. 

‘Where was the apology for her role in Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-Budget that crashed the economy and sent mortgages spiralling, or the £22 billion black hole left in the public finances? The Tories haven’t listened and they haven’t learned and Kemi Badenoch should own up to the damage she and the Conservative Party have done to the country,’ she said.