Leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, has expressed admiration for Argentina’s President Javier Milei, saying she aspires to emulate his approach to dramatically reducing the size of the state.
The Conservative leader described Javier Milei as ‘the template’ as she praised his honesty with voters and ability to deliver results.
In his election campaign in 2023, Mr Milei gained fame for wielding a chainsaw, promising to dramatically cut state spending in his country.
Asked whether the UK needed its own Milei and whether she herself fit that role, Badenoch, whose party is languishing in third place in the polls, said: “Yes and yes.”
In an interview with the Financial Times, Badenoch said Milei would be the “template” for her government. She said the Conservatives “cannot be a repository for disenchantment” and must be about “offering hope”, unlike Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
But she admitted that “the public are not yet ready to forgive” the Tories after the political chaos of the last few years and that Reform was “stealing everyone’s oxygen”.
Badenoch argued the public would eventually tire of Farage’s “bullshitting” and claimed he was positioning his party to the left of the Conservatives on issues such as benefits.
She said her own programme, which she is under pressure to set out in more detail, would be “not about cutting bits of the state” but rather “looking at what the state does, why it does it”.
Badenoch dismissed warnings that she may face a Conservative leadership challenge within months amid internal discontent about her leadership.
“I can’t spend all my time worrying about regicide. I would lose my mind,” she told the newspaper. “I’m so thick-skinned to the point where I don’t even notice if people are trying to create harm. That’s extremely useful in this job.”