UK opposition Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch dismissed the threat of her political rival Nigel Farage securing party funding from Elon Musk, saying it could be “counterproductive” with British voters.
“Politics in the US is very different from politics in the UK. People in this country don’t necessarily like to see politics being bought,” Badenoch told BBC Radio 4. “I think it would be potentially counterproductive.”
Farage’s right-wing Reform UK has dominated political discourse in recent weeks at least in part due to the apparently close links the former Brexit campaigner is forging with Musk, and reports that the X social media owner is preparing to donate to Reform on a scale that could upend British politics.
A resurgent Reform UK poses a threat to Keir Starmer’s Labour government but especially for Badenoch’s Tories, who lost votes to Reform in the July general election and slumped to an historic defeat.
But Badenoch, who has been accused of taking too long to announce policies to win over voters, accused Reform of offering only “easy answers.” She said she would welcome competition posed by any Musk funding for Reform.
“I think that if Elon Musk is giving a party, a competitor party money, then that is a challenge for me to make sure that I raise the same,” she said. “I don’t believe that he is going to give that money, but it doesn’t matter if he does.”
The Conservative leader said she expected May’s local elections would be “very difficult” and the scale of the party’s defeat last July — when it lost more than 250 parliamentary seats — meant there was no “quick fix” to turn its fortunes around before the next general election. But she also said she wasn’t prepared to set out positions that may need to change before Britons next go to the polls.
“Reform is saying stuff because it hasn’t thought it all through,” she said. “You can give easy answers if you haven’t thought it all through.
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