Badenoch insists Tories are still the main opposition to Labour

Kemi Badenoch has insisted that the Conservatives are still the main opposition to Labour despite her party slumping to fourth in a Holyrood by-election this week.

Thursday’s vote in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse saw the Tories win just 6% of the vote while Reform surged into third place with 26% a month after routing Mrs Badenoch’s party in local elections across England.

Reform’s rise in the polls has led Sir Keir Starmer to regard Nigel Farage’s party as Labour’s main opposition in the current Parliament, despite having only five MPs.

Answering questions after a speech on Friday, Mrs Badenoch dismissed Reform as a “protest party” and said claims it was the real opposition were “nonsense”.

Describing Reform as “another left-wing party”, she said: “What they’re trying to do is talk this situation into existence.

“Labour is going to be facing the Conservative Party at the next election and we’re going to get them out.”

The Conservatives’ electoral struggles come as the party continues to languish in third place in most polls while Mrs Badenoch’s personal ratings show widespread dissatisfaction with her performance.

Meanwhile, senior Tory and former leadership candidate Sir James Cleverly appeared this week to split from Mrs Badenoch on her claim that achieving net zero by 2050 was “impossible”.

Speaking on Friday, she maintained that she would be able to turn things around, saying: “I’ve always said that things would be tough, in fact in some cases would likely get worse before they get better.

“There is a lot that needs doing, but I am of very, very strong confidence that the public will see that the party has changed and that we are the only credible alternative to Labour.”

Later, in an interview with the BBC, she appeared to suggest that things could only get better for the Conservatives, saying the party had “hit rock bottom at the last general election”.

She also claimed that many of the councillors who had defected from the Tories to Reform were “people who’ve had issues in our party already”, but added she would not “bring out the CVs and the problems and the investigations we’ve had about all those people”.

Her remarks followed a speech at the Royal United Services Institute in Westminster in which Mrs Badenoch launched a commission tasked with examining how leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) would work.

While she stopped short of formally committing to leaving the convention, she said it was “likely” that Britain would “need to leave”.

She said: “I won’t commit my party to leaving the ECHR or other treaties without a clear plan to do so and without a full understanding of all the consequences.”