‘The mask has slipped just one week before the election’
Keir Starmer took apart Tory leader Kemi Badenoch at PMQs this afternoon, accusing her of losing control of her party after it emerged that her shadow justice secretary had gone against her views and sought a coalition with Reform UK.
It was reported earlier that Robert Jenrick had vowed to “bring this coalition together” to ensure that Conservatives and Reform UK are not fighting each other for votes before the next election, according to a leaked recording obtained by Sky News.
Speaking to a group of students in March, he said he was worried that Reform UK “becomes a permanent or semi-permanent fixture on the British political scene”.
In the recording, he can be heard saying: “[Reform UK] continues to do well in the polls. And my worry is that they become a kind of permanent or semi-permanent fixture on the British political scene. And if that is the case, and I say, I am trying to do everything I can to stop that being the case, then life becomes a lot harder for us, because the right is not united.
“And then you head towards the general election, where the nightmare scenario is that Keir Starmer sails in through the middle as a result of the two parties being disunited. I don’t know about you, but I’m not prepared for that to happen.”
At PMQs today, Starmer told Badenoch “the mask has slipped just one week before the election.”
He said: “The shadow justice secretary … has admitted that Reform and the Tories are working together.
“He said ‘I want this fight to be united’. He said he’s determined to bring this, ‘coalition’ he calls it, together ‘one way or another’. Well I think we know what that means.
“Every Tory voter is appalled at the thought of paying for the NHS, every Reform voter hates what the Tories did in the last 14 years – they’re not Conservatives, they’re a con.”
Starmer added: “A coalition between Reform and the Tories being formed behind her back, we know what that means when the shadow justice secretary and the member for Clacton cook up their joint manifesto.
“NHS charging, a pro-Russia foreign policy, an end to workers’ rights. Just as the last government lost control of the economy, the borders and health, in six short months she’s lost control of her party.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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