The Tory leader also hit out at Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to travel to China.
Kemi Badenoch has said a statement about Suella Braverman’s mental health “should not have gone out.”.
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Kemi Badenoch has said a Tory briefing about Suella Braverman’s mental health “should not have gone out” after a wave of backlash.
The Conservative leader stopped short of apologising after her party issued a statement suggesting the former home secretary quit the party for Reform UK due to struggles with her mental health.
The statement, which was retracted after an hour, read: “It was always a matter of when, not if, Suella would defect. The Conservatives did all we could to look after Suella’s mental health, but she was clearly very unhappy.
“She says she feels that she has ‘come home’, which will come as a surprise to the people who chose not to elect a Reform MP in her constituency in 2024.”
Now, speaking to LBC’s Natasha Clark, Ms Badenoch said the statement “should not have gone out.”
“That statement was completely wrong,” she said.
“It was sent in error and it was retracted immediately. And I’ve spoken to the person who did that, explaining to them what our party culture is.
“But the difference between me and other people leading parties is that I will say when we’ve got something wrong and I’ll fix it.
“Nigel Farage and Keir Starmer don’t think that they’re doing anything wrong at all and they never apologise.”
When pressed on whether she regrets the statement being released, Ms Badenoch said: “Well, it should not have gone out. That’s why we retracted it.”
Ms Braverman, who on Monday became Reform UK’s eighth MP, branded the original statement “pathetic.”
Addressing a press conference in London set up by Reform to announce her deferral, the former minister said: ” Those attacks say more about them, than they do about me.”
Announcing her decision to join Reform earlier in the day, she said: “I feel like I’ve come home.”
Elsewhere, with Sir Keir Starmer touching down in China, the Tory leader accused the Labour Party of making the UK economically reliant on Beijing.
“Pretty much everything that Miliband is doing relies on Chinese wind farms, solar farms, electric vehicles,” she told LBC.
“We’re not building while deindustrialising our own economy and not building any manufacturing capacity. That is going to be terrible for our future and we need to stop that.”The Tory leader also hit out at Labour’s recent pubs U-turn, which saw Rachel Reeves slash business rates by 15%.
“We have said that we should abolish business rates for small businesses.
“We don’t want to see our high streets die.
“Another temporary relief, another sticking plaster. This is not what’s going to create a country fit for the future.”