Badenoch apologises for local election ‘bloodbath’ in op-ed
Kemi Badenoch has apologised for the “bloodbath” of the local elections in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the Telegraph.
The Conservative party leader wote:
After last year’s historic defeat, and with protest votes cutting across every ballot box, we knew Thursday would be hard. I’m deeply sorry to see so many capable, hard-working Conservative councillors lose their seats. They didn’t deserve it – and they weren’t the reason we lost.
In the piece, Badenoch explained that as party members were voting in the final round of the Conservative party leadership contest, an unnamed male MP took her aside in parliament and warned “the May 2025 locals are going to be a total bloodbath”. She acknowledged that the prediction was right: “The results confirm he was correct. But to be honest, it wasn’t a controversial prediction to make.”
She added:
These local election results show the scale of the work needed to rebuild trust in the Conservative party and the importance of redoubling our efforts to show that this party is under new leadership and is doing things differently.
Key events
Headteachers’ union takes legal action against Ofsted over inspection changes
Richard Adams
Headteachers are taking legal action against Ofsted, England’s schools watchdog, over fears that its new inspection regime is “even worse than before” and likely to harm the mental health of school leaders.
The National Association of Head Teachers said it had lodged a claim for a judicial review against Ofsted “over the potential impact of their inspection proposals” and for inadequate consultation over its new system of grading schools.
Ofsted’s inspection regime has been mired in controversy since the 2023 death by suicide of the headteacher Ruth Perry, with a coroner finding that Perry’s death was “contributed to by an Ofsted inspection”.
Paul Whiteman, the NAHT’s general secretary, said:
Somehow the focus on school leader mental health and wellbeing has got lost along the way during Ofsted’s consultation process.
We must not forget that the catalyst for these changes was the tragic death of Ruth Perry and widespread acceptance that the inspection regime was placing school leaders under intolerable pressure. However, there appears to have been very little thought given to the impact on the wellbeing of school leaders in the drawing up of these plans and the consultation that followed.
School leaders are deeply concerned that the new report cards could result in an even worse system than before, with potentially disastrous impact on workload, wellbeing and retention.
We have tried engaging with Ofsted and explaining this, but so far these concerns have fallen largely on deaf ears. We have been left with little choice other than to pursue this action.
The Guardian has also just launched a visual investigation into the Victorian prisons in England and Wales. It has been created by Ana Lucía González Paz and Rajeev Syal, with design and graphics by Garry Blight, Paul Scruton, Lucy Swan and Harvey Symons. You can explore it via the link below:
Cramped Victorian prisons limiting rehabilitation, chief inspector says
Rajeev Syal
The cramped conditions of Victorian prisons in England and Wales are limiting the rehabilitation opportunities for thousands of offenders, an official watchdog has said.
As the Guardian launches a visual investigation into the state of Victorian prisons in inner cities and towns, the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, said 19th century jails could also be “incredibly noisy and distressing” for autistic people.
His words come after a series of warnings from the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, that England and Wales’s Prison Service was in crisis, leading to the early release of thousands of prisoners this autumn.
Taylor’s annual report in September showed that many prisons were severely overcrowded and understaffed, with 30 out of 32 closed prisons rated as poor or insufficiently good.
Many are overrun with rats and cockroaches and have been infiltrated by drug gangs.
Taylor, who has previously described Victorian prisons as “barely fit for purpose”, said that many of the older prisons – about 10% of 122 across England and Wales – struggled to rehabilitate offenders.
“These prisons are already overcrowded, and tend to be on fairly small footprints. When you look at prisons like Leicester or Bedford, they’re minute jails. There is very little workspace for education and training,” he said. “If the prison population is also double what it once was, then that’s not at all ideal to be able to do anything that might be vaguely thought to be rehabilitative.”
A senior Tory MP has insisted Kemi Badenoch will still be the party’s leader in a year’s time after the Conservatives lost more than 600 councillors in local elections.
Shadow chief treasury secretary Richard Fuller also ruled out a future pact with Reform UK on a national level after the party made sweeping gains, reports the PA news agency.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme how long Badenoch has to come up with answers and if we are going to see her in post in a year, he said “of course we are”.
On whether the Tories may need to look at a pact with Reform UK to get Keir Starmer out at the next general election, he said:
There won’t be pacts. Nigel Farage has been very clear that he wants to destroy the Conservative party.
Jessica Elgot
In a week of difficult local elections, there was a special guest in No 10 to give a pep talk to staff: Arsène Wenger, the former manager of Arsenal, beloved of the prime minister. Keir Starmer has sought his advice before, on the importance of building a team. And they have faced some common challenges, rebuilding their clubs and parties from low ebbs to extraordinary success.
Now Starmer may face a similar challenge – and criticism – to Wenger in his later years: whether he can adapt his tactical rigidity when results start to suffer.
So far, a successful strategy has been to win back Conservative switchers and working-class voters whom the party was felt to have abandoned. That has morphed into deep concern about the threat of Reform UK. In Runcorn and Helsby, lost by an agonising six votes having been one of Labour’s safest seats, Reform showed how it could turn out its machine.
But cabinet ministers have told the Guardian they are concerned that Labour’s own pendulum has swung too far and is alienating their own voters. In that same seat, Labour retained just 55% of its vote, suggesting many of its own voters did not turn out. The Greens, however, clung on to their vote from last July.
Nigel Farage may loom large as the biggest threat in some of Labour’s most vulnerable seats in the north and the Midlands. But MPs and ministers fear the threat in those seats of Labour staying at home and losing votes to the Greens, Liberal Democrats and independents could just as easily be the factor that would deliver seats to Reform, as more Conservative voters switch to Farage.
Badenoch apologises for local election ‘bloodbath’ in op-ed
Kemi Badenoch has apologised for the “bloodbath” of the local elections in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the Telegraph.
The Conservative party leader wote:
After last year’s historic defeat, and with protest votes cutting across every ballot box, we knew Thursday would be hard. I’m deeply sorry to see so many capable, hard-working Conservative councillors lose their seats. They didn’t deserve it – and they weren’t the reason we lost.
In the piece, Badenoch explained that as party members were voting in the final round of the Conservative party leadership contest, an unnamed male MP took her aside in parliament and warned “the May 2025 locals are going to be a total bloodbath”. She acknowledged that the prediction was right: “The results confirm he was correct. But to be honest, it wasn’t a controversial prediction to make.”
She added:
These local election results show the scale of the work needed to rebuild trust in the Conservative party and the importance of redoubling our efforts to show that this party is under new leadership and is doing things differently.
Labour MP Rachael Maskell has urged her party to scrap winter fuel and welfare policies that she said are pushing voters away, reports the PA news agency.
The York Central MP told BBC Breakfast that Labour has “special responsibilities” to serve the needs of people.
She said:
We’re not any other political party, we were created to serve the needs of people across working areas of our country so that people had a real voice of the kind of change that they wanted to see.
I think it’s now time, if Labour are going to go further faster, to pick up that voice, to put our fingers on the pulse and to understand that that responsibility that the 1945 government set out putting that safety net in place at the welfare state is on our watch and is our responsibility.
So, scrapping these proposals to push disabled people into hardship is an absolutely crucial part of that change, showing that we’re going to be listening to the country and protecting the people at their time of need.
Of course we want to get more people into work. Of course the changes to the health system is really crucial … but also we’ve got to help people and care for people as we go on that journey.
She added:
People went cold last winter and that’s not what a Labour government should be doing.
We have got that mandate, I believe, as a party to look at how we can better redistribute wealth, as opposed to taking out of the pockets of the poorest.
Starmer says he wants ‘national renewal’ and that ‘change on that scale will take time’
Keir Starmer has said he wants “national renewal” and that “change on that scale will take time”, in a Saturday op-ed for the Times.
The prime minister wrote:
In short I want national renewal. But that can only be built if people across the country have security in their lives and that will only happen if we have a secure economy, a secure health service and secure borders. Change on that scale will take time. But it is my focus, now and every day ahead.
He added:
The lesson of these elections isn’t that the country needs more politicians’ promises or ideological zealotry. It isn’t that there is some easy solution, as promised by our opponents. It’s that now is the time to crank up the pace on giving people the country they are crying out for.
A Labour MP has suggested that voters shunned her party in local elections because it has failed to live up to the values the public expects from a Labour government.
York Central MP Rachael Maskell said Labour needs to be driven by “a framework of values, which is about protecting people, helping people to move forward in their lives and ensuring you’ve got those public services ready and working so that people can have that support when they need it”.
“That is what Labour governments do,” she told BBC Breakfast. She added:
I believe that when Labour does not meet that sweet spot, that expectation that people have of a Labour government, then they start to look in less favourable places for where that help comes from.
Yesterday, many people were searching for that response, to find that protection, to get that support. But, sadly, if Labour were not offering that, they would look in other places.
That’s why Labour have got to learn from the results yesterday and ensure that we do meet the needs of people in this country in very, very trying times.
‘No simple answers’ for Reform UK, says senior Tory
Reform UK will find out there are “no simple answers” to local public finances and have to make “difficult choices” after the party surged in local elections, a senior Tory MP has said.
Richard Fuller, shadow chief treasury secretary, said it was now up to Nigel Farage’s party to see if they can deliver in the areas where they have won council seats and mayoral polls.
According to the PA news agency, Fuller told GB News:
We have to acknowledge Reform did very well yesterday.
They won the Runcorn byelection off Labour. They’ve won some mayoralties and now they will get the chance to show what they can actually do when they give them power.
So, no longer pointing at problems, but actually there to try and find solutions, albeit on a local level, to help the people in Lincolnshire or Hull, where they have taken over the mayoralties.
And other areas where they have taken control of the council.
They’ll find out, Reform will find out, I think, that there are no simple answers locally to public finances at local government level, they’ll have to make some difficult choices and the local public will … hold them to account for the decisions they make.
Farage has previously suggested every county council “needs a Doge” – a reference to Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) in the US.
Speaking on the BBC’s Today programme on Saturday, ex-GB news host Darren Grimes, who won a seat on Durham county council for Reform UK, said: “On day one of being in control, we’re get the auditors in.” More on this story in a moment, but first, here is a summary of the latest updates:
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Nigel Farage hailed Friday’s local election results as “the end of two-party politics” and “the death of the Conservative party” as Reform UK picked up 10 councils and more than 600 seats in Thursday’s poll.
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Kemi Badenoch apologised to defeated Conservative councillors after the Tories lost more than 600 councillors and all 15 of the councils it controlled going into the election, among the worst results in the party’s history. Conservative figures have sought to deny that the results are “existential” for the party.
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Several Labour figures have called on the prime minister to change course after Reform UK won the Runcorn and Helsby byelection by six votes and took control of the previously Labour-run Doncaster Council. Backbench MP Emma Lewell, who has represented South Shields since 2013, said it was “tone deaf to keep repeating we will move further and faster on our plan for change. What is needed is a change of plan.”
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Keir Starmer warned against parties offering “some simple, ideological fix”. In a Saturday op-ed for the Times, Starmer wrote that he wanted “national renewal”. He added: “But that can only be built if people across the country have security in their lives and that will only happen if we have a secure economy, a secure health service and secure borders. Change on that scale will take time.”
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In further signs of fracturing political loyalties, a BBC projection of how the voting would have looked in a UK-wide election put Reform first on 30%, Labour on 20%, the Liberal Democrats on 17%, the Conservatives fourth with 15% and the Greens on 11%.
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After losing his legal challenge over personal security, the Duke of Sussex, has appealed to the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the home secretary, Yvette Cooper. Asked whether Starmer should “step in”, he replied: “Yes, I would ask the prime minister to step in.” He then said: “I would ask Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to look at this very, very carefully and I would ask her to review Ravec [Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures] and its members.”
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The cramped conditions of Victorian prisons in England and Wales are limiting the rehabilitation opportunities for thousands of offenders, an official watchdog has said. As the Guardian launches a visual investigation into the state of Victorian prisons in inner cities and towns, the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, said 19th century jails could also be “incredibly noisy and distressing” for autistic people.