Tory Party leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has denied that she has fallen out with too many people in her own party to be able to lead it.
She told GB News: “If you look at who's supporting me, you'll find that the people who've worked with me the most are my supporters. If I was rubbing people up the wrong way, it wouldn't be them.
“All the ministers who worked in my department are supporting my leadership. I think that people want some directness. People want to hear politicians speak their minds, rather than hide behind waffly language.
“The thing about me rubbing up colleagues the wrong way is not true. It's something put about by people who are competing against me. I get on with my colleagues.
“I think it has been very interesting where some candidates have set out their stall and other candidates are talking about everybody else.
“It was really interesting [Robert Jenrick] said two things about me that weren't true. One that I've said that numbers don't matter. Numbers do matter when it comes to immigration…I’m not opposed to a cap.
“I just think that you can have a cap and the wrong people still come in. I want us to talk about who is coming into our country.
“Whenever people do things that are about other candidates, people can see so I'm just focused on my own campaign. It's for the party authorities to decide.
“I’m very happy to correct the record, but it shows that he's not actually reading or listening to what I'm saying.”
On the new Government, she said: “I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and there is nothing that they have done well, winter fuel payments, care, on policing, treating one group differently from another, stripping away Ofsted inspections.
“Parents don't know what's going on with schools, tax, VAT, taxing education. I know a hairdresser who's taking her daughter out of private education because it's just too much.
“This Labour government are terrible because they have no principles. They're just doing things without thinking.
“We were not ready for the election. They were not ready for government.”
On the winter fuel payments, she said: “They're just taking it away from anyone who doesn't have pension credit.
“Millionaires should not be getting the winter fuel payments, but there are many more people who are in poverty or who are just about managing who need it.
“But the other reason why I'm opposed to it happening is the way they've done it because the Government has made energy more expensive. In the US, energy is half the cost of ours. We add levies, we make it expensive.
“We should protect those people who can't work, who need the winter fuel payment. Let's means test it better.”
WATCH ABOVE.
