UK 'Conservative' Party Leader Says Trump Deserved to Lose Midterms, Decries 'Dirty' Style of Politics

The leader of the so-called Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, said U.S. President Donald Trump deserved to lose in the recent midterm elections and that she wouldn’t have minded if he had also lost to Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. In an interview with the left-wing Independent news site, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch claimed that the recent midterm losses for Republicans in the United States were a result of “entirely self-inflicted” wounds by President Donald Trump. Badenoch said that while the war in Iran — which she supported — played a role, she also took aim at the U.S. leader’s “dirty” style of politics and even accused him of pursuing an agenda contrary to conservative values. “He came in with this extraordinary coalition, you know, Latinos; he had more black voters than any other Republican, and what’s the first thing that he does? Tariffs. And then talking about Greenland and Canada, and I think a lot of people were wondering, what are you doing? Tariffs are bad for the cost of living. They’re not good,” she asserted. The Tory party leader claimed that protectionism and America First policies were “not what conservatives do”, arguing that he should have continued the “free market” neo-liberal adherence to global trade, which hollowed out America’s manufacturing base as corporations sought cheaper labour in Asia and elsewhere. “He has not been acting in the way that I would consider conservative,” she declared. Badenoch also took particular aim at President Trump’s personality, saying that while she found him “very charming in person”, she did not approve of the “way he talks” about opponents. “It doesn’t meet the standards that I think a politician at that level, a statesman, should meet. Just always wanting to get dirty, get his hands dirty in terms of insults and so on. When he was rude about Keir Starmer, I criticised him for that,” she said, adding that President Trump’s treatment of Ukraine leader Zelensky in the White House was “awful”. The leader of the alleged Conservative Party went on to suggest that she may have even preferred to have seen Kamala Harris win the 2024 presidential election, saying: “People ask me, who did I prefer Kamela Harris, Donald Trump, and I would say I like them both equally. Make of that what you will… there’s a double meaning in that.” Since becoming leader of the Tories in 2024, Badenoch has seen her party fall behind Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in the polls, largely because her party has failed to deliver on immigration. Despite claiming to be a “conservative”, Badenoch personally lobbied to lift the cap on the number of work visas issued annually in 2018. She then served in the Boris Johnson government, which refused to put any cap on immigration numbers in his post-Brexit immigration changes, allowing for millions of migrants to flood into the country in one of the largest waves in British history. Badenoch has since claimed that the government actually wanted to lower immigration, but that because there were “so many other things” going on that “ministers didn’t notice” that immigration had skyrocketed under their watch. In his first interview following the midterm elections, Mr Farage told the BBC President Trump deserves credit for accomplishments, noting that the “American economy has been booming”, that the United States is “now an exporter of energy, not an importer”, and that he managed to close the Southern border after Biden allowed in millions of illegal migrants. However, the Reform UK leader said that many American voters felt as though the president had “broken” the promise of not starting any new wars. “No more foreign wars was at the heart of everything he’d said since 2015. Now look, the idea of launching strikes to stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon, I was supportive of, but we’re now eight and a half months into a prolonged war that has led to increased prices, you know, gas, diesel, Americans putting in their cars. And that’s at the heart of why he’s done badly. He’s seen by many voters to have broken that promise,” he said. Mr Farage added that while he has not spoken to his longtime political ally since the elections, he expects a “very sharp increase in military action in Iran” in the coming days. Pressed on whether he would advise against doing so, the Brexit leader said: “I think all the mistakes of the last 25 years that Britain and America have made often together have been because there’s been no actual exit plan. If they’ve got a clear plan, it’s fine. But remember, this isn’t like Gaddafi. This isn’t like Saddam, where you get rid of a dictatorial head and the whole regime collapses. This is a theocracy. It’s a very different battle, and I would suspect a very hard one to win.” Follow Kurt Zindulka on X: Follow @KurtZindulka or e-mail to: kzindulka@breitbart.com