UK Politics: Badenoch Seeks to Rebuild Trust with Police

Kemi Badenoch has called on police leaders to trust the Conservative party again, stating that "bad players" within her team have been removed. Speaking to rank-and-file officers who previously jeered Theresa May, Badenoch admitted that her predecessor was wrong to reduce police numbers during austerity.

Badenoch also expressed her disagreement with May's earlier restrictions on stop and search tactics. She clarified her stance on the issue of institutional racism within the police, asserting that she has never agreed with the widespread claim that the force is institutionally racist.

Addressing the Police Federation on Thursday, Badenoch noted that she was not a Member of Parliament when officers booed and heckled May over 20% budget cuts in 2012. She acknowledged that while there were financial constraints at the time, ministers should not have assumed that falling crime rates justified cutting police numbers.

"It was the wrong thing to do," Badenoch stated, "and that's why following governments did replace the number of police officers to get us back to where we were, and then some, a little bit more."

She continued, "But the real question you're asking is, why should you trust us now? Well, I'm asking you to trust me because I'm in charge now."

Badenoch likened the situation to a football team under new management, with "a lot of the bad players gone" and a "new manager" with "new players."

She highlighted her personal record, stating, "When we had people criticising officers for stop and search, I was always there saying we need to stop and search. If anything, we should be doing more of it. So I disagreed, for instance, with Theresa May's stance on that."

Regarding accusations of institutional racism, Badenoch said, "When people were saying that the police were institutionally racist, I went out and said, you are not institutionally racist because you are not. I disagreed with that completely."

She recalled her stance during the 2020 George Floyd protests and the Black Lives Matter movement, stating, "I stood against all that. I'm on the record. When all of those politicians were jumping on that bandwagon, I stood up for the police and I backed the police."

Badenoch concluded, "I've been saying this stuff for many years, even when it wasn't easy to do, even when I was the only one that was saying it. And so that's why you can trust me and the party that I'm leading now."

However, she also addressed concerns that the police are perceived as a "ghost service" due to being "stretched so thinly." Badenoch acknowledged that families have "suffered because of devastating police failures," citing the case of Henry Nowak, a student who was handcuffed while dying and whose stabbing was not initially believed by officers. "We can understand why people lose faith in the police when they’ve watched that video footage of Henry’s last moments," she said.