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The News Agents

Why does Kemi Badenoch want an even smaller Tory party?

The News Agents

Global

News, Daily News, Politics, Government

4.15.4K Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2026

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kemi Badenoch has told her party not to get in her way as she steers it further to the Right. Is this the correct assessment of what the Conservatives needs to attract voters back? Or is she way off?

Later, Trump has threatened Iran with his big beautiful armada. Does he have any concern for the protestors getting killed in their tens of thousands thousands? Or is this all about US interests?

The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/

Transcript

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0:00.0

The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK commercial banking, opening up a world of opportunity.

0:10.4

This is a global player original podcast.

0:14.0

I was elected by Conservative Party members to renew and rebuild. That is exactly what I am doing.

0:21.6

Yes.

0:26.6

But we're not just renewing with policy, we are also renewing with standards, conduct, our discipline,

0:35.6

and our culture. And the people who don't agree with this direction need to get

0:40.3

out of the way. That was the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenok, trying to regain some momentum

0:45.8

after that string of defections to reform, taking a quite unorthodox approach, basically saying

0:52.9

to figures in her party's centre that she doesn't really want them.

0:56.3

Is she right to say she won't be swayed by those centrist who may want to join her,

1:02.7

or is she cutting off a whole tranche of voters who just haven't made up their minds yet?

1:08.6

Welcome to the newsagents.

1:17.3

Thank you. made up their minds yet. Welcome to the newsagents. The news agents. It's Emily. It's Lewis.

1:22.0

And Kemi Badenock, as I say, she's trying to get back on the front foot. Her party's obviously been rocked by this series of defections. We've seen Robert Jenric. We've seen

1:26.0

Nadim Zahari. We saw Suella Brav, just this week. And of course, one approach or one response you might take to that, and some people have speculated this might be the case, is to say, okay, reformer going off to the populist right. The Conservative Party is going to be the place of the centre right, the moderate right. and that is a sort of clear, open, vacant bit of political space, which you could say,

1:48.0

kind of exist in British politics right now, what used to historically be called one nation conservatism.

1:52.8

Kemi Bayneux in a speech today, two Conservative members, has taken precisely the opposite approach.

1:58.2

She has actually said in explicit terms that centrist ideas, and we can maybe talk about what that might mean, but centrist ideas are no longer wanted in the Conservative Party, arguing that one nation type Tories or others who have qualms about her rightward direction for the party need to get out of the way. In fact, she said explicitly that the party has been moving to the right every day and every week

2:19.6

since she became leader.

2:21.8

Yeah.

2:22.2

I mean, that line, interestingly, was removed from the speech in its latter draft.

2:26.7

Yes, for time, they said.

...

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