Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch visits logistics hub in Aylesford
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00:00A party leader in Kent. That can only mean one thing. Elections are coming.
00:06Kim Badenoch visiting apprentices at this logistics firm in Ellesford.
00:10Is there anything that you would like to see changing when it comes to apprenticeships?
00:14I think schools need to talk about them more. I didn't know that apprentices were a thing.
00:20She's also banging the drum for her party ahead of county council elections.
00:25Do you think Conservatives will still be in charge come the 1st of May?
00:28Well, let's wait and see. I have said that this is going to be a very, very difficult election.
00:32What we're working on now is rebuilding trust with the public.
00:35Kent has long been a Conservative stronghold, with the party controlling KCC since 1997.
00:42But a 2024 general election dealt a blow, reducing their grip to just six constituencies.
00:50Her visit today, just a stone's throw from Chatham and Ellesford, now Labour territory.
00:57She's got a challenge ahead of her. I think the Liberal Democrats
01:00and Labour are doing a great campaign in Maidstone. Perhaps that's the reason why
01:04she's coming down, because she's worried about losing council seats, some of which were very safe.
01:10And similarly, across all the mauling seats, we're putting up a massive fight against them.
01:16And the polls don't look good. The Conservatives trailing in third place
01:21behind Nigel Farage's reform UK. They're winning by-election after by-election across Kent.
01:31She'll be aware of how challenging the next two months will be, sealing those Kent voters back.
01:38You talk about roads, I think a lot of voters are going to be looking at the state of Kent's roads.
01:41They're full of potholes. Conservatives were in charge for 14 years. Central Government, KCC,
01:47consistently said they didn't have enough money. I mean, why should a Kent voter choose to vote
01:53for Conservatives after those 14 years? Well, I think the critical thing you said
01:57was not having enough money. We are spending so much money at the moment on welfare, on the state,
02:03and the things that we used to do well, like build roads all across the country,
02:07are getting harder to do. We're also spending money on things like adult social care at a
02:12phenomenal rate. This was not something that we spent a lot of money on previously,
02:16but with an ageing population, the burdens on social care are actually eating away at the
02:21budget's four roads. The Conservative leader might have learned to pack some products today,
02:28but come 1st May, she'll hope to be packing in the voters to the polling stations for her party.
02:34Gabriel Morris, in Aylesford.