UK Conservative leader refuses pact with far right despite party struggles

Filed 1h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Ronnie Macdonald from Chelmsford, United Kingdom · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch used her party conference keynote to rule out any electoral pact with Nigel Farage's Reform UK, calling his party's record on candidates and finances disqualifying, even as sitting Tory MPs keep defecting to it.

She also announced a plan to abolish inheritance tax on family homes and let couples pass on an extra 1 million pounds tax-free, framing it as a defense of homeownership. Government data shows only 4.72% of deaths currently trigger any inheritance tax charge at all, meaning the policy targets a problem that, by the numbers, barely exists for 95% of estates.

Badenoch claimed more than 70 billion pounds in identified government savings and pledged to expand North Sea oil and gas drilling, arguing cheap energy drives growth. The Conservatives hold 121 of 650 Commons seats, down from 365 in 2019, and remain behind both Labour and Reform in national polls.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A party that lost two out of every three seats it used to hold is out here promising tax cuts on an inheritance tax almost nobody pays. That is a bit like a man who sold his truck telling the neighbors he has got a real good plan for the garage. The shop window line was honest enough, people are looking, they are just not buying, and no amount of North Sea drilling talk changes what the polls already say about the merchandise.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Vanishing · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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