Badenoch hits back as Starmer seeks China reset (Full Transcript)

[00:00:07] Speaker 1: That is what it was like to be waiting for Cammy Badenoch to deliver a big speech in Westminster today, Wednesday the 28th of January. She had some very, I don't quite know how to describe it, I've seen it as Ibiza style chill out warm up music. But the person who was really there for real was Alex Forsyth. Hello. Hello. Do you want to do a, let's stick with the cool thing. Would you like to do a vibe check from the Cammy Badenoch speech?

[00:00:32] Speaker 2: Well, just on the music, it's so interesting that you picked up on that because as I was sat in the room, waiting for her to come on and deliver this speech, I actually turned to one of the other journalists that was there and said, my God, this music feels like I'm just about to start an aerobics class or something. It was really notable. So I don't know, vibe check in the room. I mean, it was packed, it was busy. Quite often parties obviously do ship in supporters for these kind of events so that it does look like they've got a big crowded room that they're delivering a speech to, but there really were quite a lot of people at this event. And it was among the clearly conservative supporters in the room, it was really well received.

[00:01:07] Speaker 1: And we should explain to younger newscast listeners that aerobics is what people did before Hit and High Rocks. Oh my God, you just made me feel really old in one sentence. We're the same age though, you and I, pretty much. So we're both really old. It's okay. Right, that's the musical analysis. In fact, there's a little bit more Kemi Badenoch musical content coming up at the end of today's newscast. But you'll get the political analysis first on this episode of Newscast. Hello, it's Adam in the Newscast Studio.

[00:01:35] Speaker 2: Hello, it's Alex in the Westminster Studio.

[00:01:37] Speaker 1: And we'll be joined shortly by Chris Mason, who will give us an update on the Prime Minister's trip to China because Chris is on the plane with him. So Alex, do you want to do sort of the context of Kemi Badenoch's speech, first of all, like why we think she felt the need to summon you all to a room with aerobics or chill out music?

[00:01:53] Speaker 2: Yes, insert interpretation of musical choice here. Yeah, I mean, look, the background is key because obviously what we've had in recent weeks is this steady stream, I think it's fair to say, of defections from the Conservative Party to Reform UK, including some names that will be familiar to people. So of course, we had the one time Shadow Justice Secretary, Robert Jenrick, who in a day of high drama left the Conservatives to Reform UK. Then there were others like Andrew Rossendale, and then most recently, Suella Braverman, former Conservative Home Secretary who crossed the floor and was revealed as an Nigel Farage veterans event. So I think that this was Kemi Badenoch in the wake of all of that, with lots of questions swirling about what's going on on the right of British politics, trying to assert control over her party, and trying to kind of put her flag in the ground as to where she thinks the Conservative Party sits when it comes to the political spectrum, trying to carve out the space it can claim.

[00:02:49] Speaker 1: I mean, the cliched way of reporting as a political journalist would be Kemi Badenoch mounts fightback and tries to get on front foot, wouldn't it?

[00:02:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, it would be. And she, to be fair to Kemi Badenoch, addressed those defections head on, you know, she kind of didn't shy away from what has happened. But she kept saying in her words that she was trying to draw a line under the psychodrama. Interesting, because of course, the word psychodrama, which is flung around quite a lot in politics at the moment, is something that opposition parties like to accuse the Conservative Party of. Now Kemi Badenoch is doing exactly the same. So she says her trying to do exactly that to say, look, defections come what may, you know, whatever's going on with those. We are cracking on. This is where I think the party sits. This is what I think about the defectors. And she has some pretty choice language when she was talking about them.

[00:03:38] Speaker 1: Well, yeah, she said that they were just throwing a tantrum. And she then said, Oh, I'm sorry, you didn't win the leadership contest. I'm sorry, you didn't get a place in the shadow cabinet. I'm sorry, you didn't get a place in the House of Lords, which was without naming three of the individuals who've gone over. That's what she claims that they were wanting.

[00:03:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, very clearly indicating them without saying their names. And she accused them of tantrums dressed up as politics and called them drama queens, and was attempting to draw this contrast between what she was trying to portray as a sort of serious party in the Conservatives, while those others can kind of disappear off to Reform UK if they choose. But what was interesting is, of course, the fact that she wasn't able to rule out any further defections. She was trying to sort of brush it aside and say, you know, we only want people that are Conservatives in the party. And if people choose to lose, you know, if they don't agree with a direct time taking the party, they can get out of the way. But she couldn't say that there weren't going to be others that might might jump ship in coming days or weeks.

[00:04:34] Speaker 1: And in the middle of what you just said, there was a little reference to the other people she was taking aim at, which are her own colleagues in the Conservative Party, some of whom set up this little side group on Monday called Prosper UK, where they're arguing that the Conservatives need to fight on the kind of the centre right, or the centre ground, as opposed to the proper right, as Kemi Badenoch would describe it. And that was people like Andy Street, former mayor of the West Midlands, Ruth Davidson, former leader of the Conservatives in Scotland under David Cameron.

[00:05:03] Speaker 2: Yeah, this was really interesting. So this was the sort of argument that Kemi Badenoch was attempting to make about the party positioning. And she kept saying, you know, we are a party of the right. And I think that is obviously because we know and we have discussed before the fact that with Reform UK, and where Reform UK is sitting in the polls, and with the defections it's had from the Conservatives, everybody knows that there is this sort of tussle on the right of British politics, with the Conservatives and Reform UK both trying to assert themselves as that party. And Kemi Badenoch was saying that, you know, she was saying, and she was talking about things that she would perceive as being values of a party of the right around immigration or energy and net zero in the economy. But she was also trying to say, because I put it to her, she said, if you're saying that you're a party of the right, does that mean you're abandoning the middle ground of politics? But she was trying to say, look, no, we're not. She was saying this isn't about left or right. This is about kind of common sense and rather than factionalism. But I kind of pushed her a bit on this. And I said, look, you've got Ruth Davidson, and you've got Andy Street warning that you can't abandon the centre ground of British politics and the people that are feeling maybe that they might be a bit politically homeless at the moment. And she was saying that, again, if people don't agree with the direction I'm taking a party, they can get out of the way. But she went on to kind of caveat by saying, she thought that Andy Street and Ruth Davidson could be helpful. But it's clear that what she's attempting to do is assert her authority over the party and take it in the direction that she wants it to go. You said today, you are not a party of the left, you're not accommodating people who want to paint that picture. Who do you mean? Andy Street and Ruth Davidson?

[00:06:39] Speaker 3: Anyone, anyone who is trying to change the perception of our party from the story that I'm telling. You know, Andy Street and Ruth Davidson are great people who did great things in our party. There are other people who joined that movement, who defected from our party to the Lib Dems. And the thing I'm trying to say is that people who don't stay in our party to fix problems, but rush off to every other party. It's all part of the personality politics. Do you mean Ruth Davidson and Andy Street? No, no, no, not at all. Ruth Davidson and Andy Street have been very supportive, but they are supporting the agenda which I'm delivering. I'm not changing my agenda to be something different. And I think it's important that people understand that. And anyone who wants a different agenda needs to understand that that's not coming. I've been very consistent. I haven't changed my mind. I stood on a platform to lead the party. Party members voted for me, not anyone else. And I am delivering for them what I said I would deliver.

[00:07:35] Speaker 1: Also, Alex, Kemi Badenoch was asked about that response that the Conservatives put out initially to Suella Braverman's defection on Monday, which seemed to call into question Suella Braverman's mental health. And obviously enough people in the Conservative Party called that into question that that statement was withdrawn and replaced with another one.

[00:07:51] Speaker 2: Yeah, I asked her again about this directly. And she just said that she'd never have gone out. She apologised for it, that it shouldn't have happened. She said the person that did put that mistakenly out in her words, mistakenly, they've been spoken to. So again, trying to draw a line under it, because that did obviously attract quite a lot of consternation from quite a lot of quarters. But she did put her hands up and say that the party apologised and that should never have happened.

[00:08:19] Speaker 1: Now, we will talk about what she said about China. But after we've heard from actual China, because Chris Mason is there having landed in Beijing with the Prime Minister and a whole load of people on the plane as well. And here's the conversation I had with Chris as we managed to grab him in between planes and Chinese banquets and oh, yeah, going to sleep. Chris, hello. Hello. Where are you right now as we record this bit of this bit of newscast on Wednesday at 12.45 UK time?

[00:08:47] Speaker 4: So it's almost nine o'clock at night where I am in Beijing. And I am currently watching the spectacle of a reversing motorcade. So we're in a back street at the back of a restaurant that the Prime Minister has just arrived at. He got out of a very gleaming motor with the flags on the front, the Chinese flag and the UK, the Union flag and headed into the restaurant. And then what tends to happen at these moments is that the motorcade needs to do some sort of performative kind of U-turn so that it's ready to drive off when he comes out in an hour or two's time. So that's what's happening right now in the mid-evening chill of Beijing in January. It is a bit on the parky side here.

[00:09:33] Speaker 1: Well, our colleague Laura Bickert in Beijing did warn that the main feature of this trip, apart from the geopolitics, would be the coldness. So she was definitely right about the second half. What about the first half? Has there been any politics yet?

[00:09:44] Speaker 4: Yeah, a little bit. So obviously, as I say, it's late into the or mid-evening here. So the itinerary for the Prime Minister on Wednesday is pretty limited. Wednesday basically, from our perspective here, disappeared in a combination of a long-haul flight and an eight-hour time difference. What it does mean is that by the time the Prime Minister is having his crucial meeting with President Xi tomorrow, on Thursday, he will have actually had a night's sleep in a bed as opposed to rattling around on a plane. So what has he done since he arrived? There was the usual kind of thing of walking down the steps from the plane and being met by the ambassador and also something of a welcoming delegation. Intriguingly, Adam, he, as we were about 10, 15 minutes shy of getting into Beijing, there was the old bing-bong on the plane and the tannoy and you half expect it to be, you know, the pilot saying, put your seatbelt on or whatever. And it was and it was Keir Starmer. He was in the cockpit, he'd commandeered the tannoy and he was thanking the delegation of kind of corporate and cultural leaders who have come out on this trip with him for coming and then had a joke about how he was going to land the plane himself. And here is Captain Keir.

[00:10:56] Speaker 5: This is the first Prime Minister trip to China in eight years and we've got an excellent delegation from business, culture, art, sport and we're going to unlock opportunities for our country. I just wanted to say a special shout out for Mark from BA. It is his 60th birthday and he volunteered to work today. So Mark, thank you very much. And finally, can I say sit back, enjoy the rest of the flight. I'll be bringing the plane in.

[00:11:32] Speaker 1: A little bit of an insight into life on the PM's plane there. Who else was on the plane with you and he?

[00:11:38] Speaker 4: So a fair old mix of folks. Normally on these trips, I've done quite a few of these trips in the last four years or so, it's usually the PM and his team and then rattling around in the back is a sort of ragtag bunch of reporters like me. And on some of them it's a bit different and this is one of them. So a bit like the trip he did to India last autumn, that wasn't a trip I was on because it clashed with the Conservative Party Conference, but newscaster Alex Versaith was there for us. That one, like this one, he's brought a delegation of business folk with him. So there's people from HSBC and from Barclays and from some law firms, but there's also then cultural figures from some museums around the UK, from Table Tennis England I noticed. So there's a desire to deepen and broaden cultural connections with China as well as kind of corporate business ones. I think part of the rationale is to project the image of the UK being open for business, yes to an audience in China, although let's not kid ourselves, the Prime Minister of the UK coming here isn't going to be sort of on the tip of the tongue of every Chinese citizen, but also to project an image back home that the Prime Minister is banging the drum for British business and to try and take on that thing about the, you know, the Never Hear Kia label that gets thrown around his neck for all of the foreign travel that he does and trying to make an argument that the national and the international are indivisible. But yeah, he seemed in pretty good spirits, you heard it there in that little bit of fun in the cockpit, but also when we spoke to him on the plane out here, the little huddle where we're sort of loitering near the toilets on the plane and asking questions of the Prime Minister and trying to hear the answers, because obviously planes are pretty noisy, he wouldn't give us Adam much of an insight, perhaps perfectly sensibly to be frank, but he wouldn't give us much of an insight into his kind of conversational negotiating strategy with President Xi that is to come, particularly the whole business of how you raise human rights issues, how you raise all sorts of issues where frankly the UK and China are a long way apart. I think those issues will be raised, he didn't really want to give a, if not a running commentary, then a sort of pre-commentary on all of that, but we'll get a sense of it in the next 24 hours when those meetings happen.

[00:13:57] Speaker 1: And Chris, you mentioned Table Tennis England there, I'm guessing you've not had time to see the Oscar-nominated ping-pong film Marty Supreme, so we'll just park that for another day.

[00:14:07] Speaker 4: I haven't, but sorry to interrupt, but I just feel I must inject here, we are going to get the chance apparently, I don't know if I'll have time, but to actually have a go at sort of serving a table tennis ball in the direction of kind of these Chinese table tennis megastars. So presumably that is not an activity that lasts very long, because you sort of zap the ball over to them and then they sort of smash it back at you. But anyway, yeah.

[00:14:34] Speaker 1: Well Chris, as long as that's the only bit of that film you recreate on this trip, we'll be okay. Right, I can't wait for you to see it when it comes out on streaming after I've said that. Right, you mentioned Alex and her being on the India trip. She was telling us earlier on in this episode of Newscast about Kemi Bajinok's big speech today, and I won't get you to do the domestic analysis of it because you're on the other side of the world, that wouldn't be fair. But she did say if she was Prime Minister she would not be doing this trip, so there is some domestic politics around this. And also I'm also just thinking, actually, I can't imagine Donald Trump being super keen that a country like Britain is, okay, cosying up to China. That's a value loaded description of what Keir Starmer is doing today. But he's got a bit of political triangulation to do here.

[00:15:20] Speaker 4: Yeah, he does. So yeah, Alex and I were exchanging WhatsApps as she was hurtling along to the Kemi Bajinok speech, and I was trying to speak to the Prime Minister and his team here. And yeah, Kemi Bajinok has got a very different strategy and instinct as far as China is concerned right now. A definitive answer to that question of whether or not she would be here right now, were she Prime Minister right now, and her answer was no. And then, as you say, there's the international picture. I know from speaking to some folk who know the minds of plenty in the Trump administration that they are nervous, sceptical about, as they might see it, as you say, it's a rather loaded phrase, but sort of cosying up to China. It's not just the UK doing it. We saw the reaction that the Trump administration had to Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister's trip here recently. The argument the UK government makes is, look, the position that they are seeking to move the UK to, which is, as they would put it, a warmer and more pragmatic relationship with China, is entirely in keeping and normal with the relationship that France and Germany have had for much of the last decade. Their presidents and chancellors, respectively, have been making plenty of trips here in the eight years that there hasn't been a British Prime Ministerial visit. As I say, the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney here recently, and Donald Trump's expected here in April. So, you know, to that extent, folk around the Prime Minister are saying, look, you know, let's not overdo the idea of it sort of being one thing or the other. Intriguingly, Adam, I was talking to the guy who runs Brompton Bikes on the way out here in the dead of night whilst we were queuing for the toilet on the plane, and he was saying that doing business here is more, if you like, predictable and stable than it is in America. Yes, America right now, because, you know, will there won't be tariffs, etc, etc, which can just make a business model obsolete or redundant overnight. But he said it actually stretches back before Donald Trump's time in the White House. So when you have those conversations padding around in your socks at 36,000 feet at three in the morning, you just get that sense of how rapidly the world is changing in these early decades of the 21st century.

[00:17:42] Speaker 1: And all eyes will be on whether Keir Starmer folds in the face of pressure from Xi Jinping, which is a little Brompton Bikes reference there, because they are folding bikes. Right, Chris, I'm going to let you... Very well, very well done. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Right, Chris, I'm gonna let you go, because I know you've got lots of work to do and some sleep to catch up on. And also even just broadcasting from China, as we were hearing on the previous episode, is not the simplest thing. But before you go, are we going to see video evidence of you playing table tennis against a Chinese champion?

[00:18:10] Speaker 4: Now, there is a request.

[00:18:13] Speaker 1: Let's see about that. Shall I put it like that? Maybe we could have like an audio recounting of it if we don't have video evidence. Anyway, Chris, thank you very much and safe travels. Cheers, see ya. So Alex, in that conversation with Chris, he let slip that you and he had been WhatsAppping across the continents.

[00:18:30] Speaker 2: Across the continents, because a weird number popped up as I was sitting in the Kemi Badenoch press conference waiting for her to get going. I got a WhatsApp from a random number. I said, oh, who's that?

[00:18:40] Speaker 1: Is this Chinese embassy up and running already? Yeah, what's occurring here?

[00:18:43] Speaker 2: And it was Chris on his burner phone. Obviously, Kemi Badenoch had written in the Daily Telegraph, a highly critical piece about Keir Starmer and the government's approach to China. But what was not abundantly clear in that piece is whether or not she agreed with his decision to actually go. So yes, we were having a little WhatsApp exchange with Chris from China from strange number and me in the Kemi Badenoch press conference. And then I did ask her, bluntly, would you be on a plane to Beijing if you were Prime Minister right now, given the argument that some people advance and the argument that the government has advanced about the kind of need to have a dialogue with China and the government's words, a clear eyed dialogue, because of the nature of China's economy, and the trade links between the two countries and all the rest of it. And she was really clear on that. She said no, not now. And her argument about that was primarily down to security concerns. So she was saying it's not the right time, in her view, to be having that kind of in person dialogue with China. Highly critical of Keir Starmer's approach. But you heard, of course, the argument that the government is advancing as to why it thinks that it does, in fact, need to.

[00:19:51] Speaker 1: And of course, slightly easier for the leader of the opposition to say that, because she's turning down an invitation she hasn't received.

[00:19:57] Speaker 2: Yeah, quite right. Quite right, of course. And it's a very similar thing, isn't it, to what can sometimes be a criticism that's levelled at Ed Davey when he talks about Donald Trump and is highly critical of President Trump, is that when, of course, when you are in government as a leader of a country, can you do what you always said you would have done when you were in opposition?

[00:20:19] Speaker 1: The old proverb of, if you don't go to a state banquet, you are never going to be noticed at in the first place. Did you not go at all? Or something like that? Sorry to the Chinese for mangling that one.

[00:20:30] Speaker 2: If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears. Yeah, I was trying to do that one. Yeah, exactly.

[00:20:34] Speaker 1: But I was trying to be too clever for my own good. Right. Anything else from Westminster you'd like to bring us?

[00:20:39] Speaker 2: No, I think that's probably it. I mean, all eyes on China and what's going to happen and where Chris ends up in the next couple of days. Interesting.

[00:20:44] Speaker 1: No, I promised some more Cammie Badenoch related musical content because she was on Desert Island Discs on Radio 4.

[00:20:51] Speaker 2: Oh, I haven't heard this yet.

[00:20:52] Speaker 1: Oh, good, good. I haven't heard this yet. Because we're going to issue you a little challenge, Alex, as a fellow Radio 4 presenter. Oh, crikey. So three of the best known tracks that Cammie Badenoch picked, we're going to try and get you to identify them. Oh, I feel stressed out already. Ah, but because of musical rights. Well, wait, I should be the one that's more stressed because wait to hear this. Because of musical rights issues on a podcast, you're not really allowed to play commercial tracks. So I'm going to hum them to you and you have to see if you can recognise them.

[00:21:21] Speaker 2: This is like a bad Christmas game. OK.

[00:21:23] Speaker 1: Or a bad BBC 2 panel show. OK. Right. Here is one. So these are quite well known. One of them is very tricky. This one is really famous.

[00:21:40] Speaker 2: Absolutely no idea. What on earth is that? Your humming is terrible.

[00:21:44] Speaker 1: I know.

[00:21:44] Speaker 2: Can you make it more tuneful? Can't you sing it?

[00:21:47] Speaker 1: No. No.

[00:21:50] Speaker 2: La?

[00:21:51] Speaker 1: That was... No, I'm just doing humming.

[00:21:54] Speaker 2: OK, no idea.

[00:21:55] Speaker 1: That was Michael Jackson. Don't stop till you get enough.

[00:21:57] Speaker 2: That was rubbish.

[00:21:58] Speaker 1: OK, here we go. Yes, love is all around. Right, this one's really hard.

[00:22:14] Speaker 2: It sounds like you're speaking. Is it like wear sun cream?

[00:22:17] Speaker 1: Yes, Baz Luhrmann.

[00:22:18] Speaker 2: Well done. Is it called wear sun cream?

[00:22:20] Speaker 1: There we are.

[00:22:23] Speaker 2: Oh, better than we thought.

[00:22:24] Speaker 1: You're the winner and my humming is the loser.

[00:22:26] Speaker 2: It was excellent.

[00:22:27] Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Alex, but mainly thank you for your political analysis and your willingness and secondarily your willingness to play along with our silly Kemi Bejanok Desert Island Disc Game Show.

[00:22:38] Speaker 2: Always willing.

[00:22:39] Speaker 1: Actually, could that be a companion podcast to Desert Island Discs where I just hum the tracks? Do you know what?

[00:22:44] Speaker 2: I think it's got a limited shelf life, I'll be honest.

[00:22:48] Speaker 1: I mean, people are talking about a vacancy on the Today programme. That's not the vacancy people need to think about.

[00:22:52] Speaker 2: Or maybe not even the pitch.

[00:22:55] Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, hang on. I could do the pips on the Today programme.

[00:23:04] Speaker 2: Now, that was pretty good.

[00:23:05] Speaker 1: OK, right. I think we should definitely end this episode. Alex, goodbye.

[00:23:09] Speaker 2: Goodbye.