two hundred and eleven people are now known to have died and many are still missing. and kemi badenoch wins the race to become the new leader of britain's conservative party. badenoch — the former business secretary — was up against the former immigration minister robertjenrick. she'll now have the job of rebuilding the party afterjuly�*s crushing general election defeat. now on bbc news, more reaction to kemi badenoch's victory to become leader of the conservative party, with today's episode of newscast. newscast. newscast from the bbc. it's laura in the newscast studio. and it's chris at westminster in one spot. and it's henry, about ten or so metres away in a different spot in westminster. it's sad for me that you're not sitting together, but it's very nice for the three of us to be

together here as a saturday afternoon trio i think for the first time. so then give us the nuts and bolts, henry, the headlines, the results. how did she actually do it? how close was it? was anybody there really surprised? really close. it's the closest leadership election we've ever had since conservative party members first were given the final say in 2001. 57, 43 are the headline figures. that's a whisker closer than it was between liz truss and rishi sunak in 2022. and i think a whisker closer than many people in westminster expected. but as we were saying, the truth is people didn't really know. i think it wasn't a shock result in the room, but it was felt as a significant result. because i was dashing in between the bbc two cameras and the room itself, i was standing right at the back with all the sort of conservative party staff members, and you could see that it wasjust a big moment for them finding out who their boss is going to be for most likely the next three, four, five years. and i think we shouldn't walk past the biggest significance of this, which is that it is overwhelmingly likely,

though not certain, that at the next general election, kemi badenoch will be presented to the british people as one of two major candidates to be prime minister. it's always great to stand with the staffers where i used to like to stand as well, and that's where you get sort of raised eyebrows or eye rolls. but we in the office here in the bbc broadcasting house, we were watching the shots of the partners of mrsjenrick and mr badenoch just before the result came through, because the two politicians were trying very, very hard to be as stony faced as they possibly could be. their partner's faces, however, were a little bit different to that. and, chris, why do you think that badenoch did win? because she was always the favourite in a kind of unpollable group of people. but she wasn't the sort of super soaraway victor today. but why do you think she clinched it? i think in the end there was a there was a sense from enough conservatives, and you hear this in quite

a striking way when you speak to her supporters, of a genuine sense that they see her as a once in a generation conservative, as someone whose convictions and manner and instincts and background create a leader that they think will be to be reckoned with. the interesting thing, and i think this plays into an element of perhaps it being closer than some might have imagined, is that she's quite enigmatic. you know, we don't see, we haven't seen, even those of us whose job it is to to follow every cough and spit of politics, she doesn't throw herself in front ofjournalists in the way that some politicians do. we barely saw her doing media interviews until the very end of the conservative leadership race. in contrast, robertjenrick said yes, it seemed, to pretty much everything and tried to exploit that difference. so how is she going to be in this very public role? it's not all about being in front of the cameras, leader of the opposition, but it's almost all about that. and sometimes she's demonstrated a resistance to that.

so how will she adjust to that? but yeah, her supporters speak of her in the most superlative terms, and notjust for the benefit of the cameras when they think they've got to say something good about the new boss. they say that privately, too, in terms of how she thinks, how she formulates arguments. but they also say she's not the finished article. they acknowledge that she has the capacity to put her foot in her mouth. so it's going to be fascinating. it's going to be fascinating seeing the battle to come. it's interesting you say that. the phrase i've heard most often about her, i think if i had to kind of paraphrase it is she's potentially super high reward, but also super high risk. but when she took to the stage, she didn't give a kind of massive, big, long, encyclopaedic speech. it was actually seemed to me it was quite tight. lots and lots of thank yous in the speech. newscast listener charles was quick off the mark — he pointed out there were more thanks than on an oscar night. let's just play you a snippet of what she said in

that winning moment. the task that stands before us is tough, but simple. - our first responsibility as his majesty's loyall opposition is to hold this - labour government to account. our second is- no less important. it is to prepare, over- the course of the next few years, for government, i to ensure that by the time of the next election, - we have notjust a clear set of conservative pledges that| appeal to the british people, but a clear plan for how - to implement them, a clear plan to change this country by changing the way l that government works. the prime minister is. discovering all too late the perils of not having such a plan. _ that huge job begins today. applause.

it will seek to involve all of. our colleagues in parliament, in the scottish parliament, the senate, our friends - in northern ireland, i as well as councillors ——in the scottish parliament, the senedd, our friends - in northern ireland, i as well as councillors and party members. but this is not just _ about the conservative party. it is about the people | we want to bring back to the conservative party. it is about the people we need to bring intoj the conservative party. it is about what the - conservative party needs to be over the next five, ten, and 20 years. - 0ur party is critical _ to the success of our country, but to be heard, we have to be honest, honest about the factl that we made mistakes, honest about the fact i that we let standards slip. the time has come to tell the truth. i applause. and henry, what would you say is the true state of the tory party now? we'll get into the policy stuff in a second. but ijust think in terms of the state of the party, how would you truthfully

describe it as a group of an entity that got absolutely battered injuly, but, you know, still are a massive part of the fabric of our political life? well, i actually think the fact that they've had such a long leadership election, almost four months, has allowed them to postpone, to an extent, the reckoning with how diminished they are, at least in parliament, as a force. there are only 121 conservative mps. that's extraordinary. but they've spent most of the last four months talking about the future. i think now, particularly as kemi badenoch begins to put together a shadow cabinet and shadow front bench, some of the consequences of that terrible defeat for the conservative party will begin to become a lot more clear. i mean, this is going to sound a bit technical, but i think it's really important... go on, you've come to the right place! well, if the conservatives are to have a nominated shadow minister for every single government minister, then practically every single conservative mp who's willing

to serve on the front bench is going to have to be on that front bench. that gives kemi badenoch almost zero room for manoeuvre to start off with. then you include... well, first you account for all the people who don't want to serve rishi sunak, jeremy hunt, james cleverly we learned at the weekend going to the back benches. steve barclay has been the shadow environment secretary in the cabinets for the last three prime ministers. he's just announced he wants to be a backbencher. i'm told there's a good dozen or so more in that mind. ok, so that takes you down to about 100. there's a few select committee chairs, that takes you to the high 905, and so on and so on. there's a good 15 or so. as one tory said to me, no leader of the conservative party would want them on the front bench. so you end up with a very small number of people who kemi badenoch needs to forge an opposition from. and she said there in that clip, we heard that that is the first task of the conservative party to be a functional opposition. but when they have so few mps as a consequence of their defeat at the last general election, ijust think the mechanics of opposing this

government now that people will have higher expectations than they have done in this interim phase of them actually being a constructive, effective opposition, i think that's going to be very hard for them. and it's interesting also, as we record at 2:15 on saturday, i don't think and maybe i've completely missed this, you two will be closer to it than i am, but do we have an expectation of the kind of team that she wants to put together? you know, you've seen bits and pieces of speculation about who, for example, andrew griffiths we hear, who was a minister under borisjohnson has sort of been in that kind of rank, below the top ranks for a while. he apparently has got aspirations to be who was a minister under borisjohnson, has sort of been in that kind of rank, below the top ranks for a while. he apparently has got aspirations to be the shadow chancellor. aspirations to be but, you know, do we know, chris, at this stage, is her plan to put together a shadow cabinet, you know, in the way that theresa may tried to do? she wanted to represent every single part of the parliamentary party. or is she more likely to do what liz truss did, which is to basically only give her supportersjobs? notwithstanding what henry has just explained, that actually just getting enough bums on seats might

be a real nightmare. well, yeah, the bums on seats thing is a factor. i did have some fun with andrew griffiths, actually, when i was dashing around with a camera in tow, grabbing folk, senior conservative folk immediately after the result, and i asked him on camera whether he fancied being shadow chancellor, which he didn't say no to. he sort of danced around it a little bit. um, and he's certainly been very energetic in opposition in the last, in the last few months. so i think the instinct from kemi badenoch is to go broad in terms of her appointments. in other words, acknowledge the breadth of view within the conservative parliamentary party rather than, if you like, the more liz truss esque model, which was to build a cabinet in her in her own image. as i say, as henry was saying, i think the bigger challenge is that is that personnel one and as we record at what, 2:20 on saturday afternoon, the current expectation is that there won't suddenly be a flurry of shadow cabinet appointments. we're not expecting any today. i was even steered away from necessarily any tomorrow, or whether they can resist that temptation as the weekend goes on, not least because the news agenda is going to flip

stateside within a couple of days, isn't it? so they might be tempted, i wonder, a little later this weekend to do a little more of it. they'll certainly have the main players in place, i'm told, in time for a shadow cabinet meeting on tuesday, but existing frontbenchers have been told to expect to carry on if necessary until wednesday because they, you know, take monday morning in parliament, there'll be things that conservative frontbenchers have to turn up to, to oppose to, to fulfil their duty as a, as the opposition. so there'll be the sort of transition over the next couple of days. i think that does come back to your point though, earlier, chris, about the opposition having to take every opportunity they can to get on camera. i mean, i thinkjust in sheer media management terms, it would be utterly bizarre if they waited until wednesday when the world, including the uk, is going to be consumed by the question of who the new us president is going to be, if that is their moment to say, oh, and by the way, this person is our shadow transport secretary. good luck getting even

transport trade publications to pay attention. yeah, i think so. i think they will have done. i mean, it's a fair point. i mean, i think they'll have done shadow cabinet by tuesday in time for that shadow cabinet meeting, whether or not they've done the lower ranks. below that, i guess, is the is the wider question and hence this desire that those who have been doing it in a kind of shadow shadow cabinet way sincejuly might have to do that thing at the despatch box or that thing that, you know, that parliamentary obligation. but it is actually it's interesting. and i think newscasters will like this in a way. opposition parties actually are really quite small outfits and operations. they don't have many people. they're either going to be trying to persuade some experienced people to hang around a bit longer, or they're going to have loads of people who haven't done it before thinking, well, you know, where do we go? where are the loos in the norman shaw building, in westminster, where the leader of the opposition hangs out? how many staff do they get?

what's the relationship between them and the official tory party headquarters round the corner in matthew parker street? just how does this actually work? and kemi badenoch, for all that, she's been in the cabinet for a long time, and there are some people in her team who've been around for a while, people who worked for theresa may, she is still a relatively green politician to the sort of mechanics of this whole operation. and the tories haven't had to do this since 1997 and, you know, start afresh in this kind of way. and it can be, and i'm not saying it will be, but these kinds of opposition operations can be really shambolic. and mechanics matter, don't they, for that reason. because if you don't get the mechanics right, it can be shambolic. i bumped into a shadow minister the other day and i could see them on a neighbouring table, and they were sort of scribbling away with a biro on a bit of paper, and ijust said, oh, what are you up to? and they said, i'm just starting a speech draft. and then they were adjusting to the fact that a matter of months ago, a template would have been assembled by the civil service, into which they would have knocked a bit of political language and, and that kind of stuff. and actually, the brutal

reality of being in opposition is it's a pen and a blank sheet of paper, and away you go. and a biro, if you're lucky. yeah. bumping into chris mason and, you know, exactly. as if it's not bad enough. not sitting with your permanent secretary and talking about what important decisions are you going to make that day? you get interrupted by me. yeah, completely. i remember bumping into a shadow minister i mean, in the sort of ten days or so after the general election. so a newly shadow minister, previously a minister. and i said, oh, what's in that file? it's a very similar story to yours, i said, or what's in that file? they said, oh, i'm winding up this debate. so giving the last speech from the conservative side in a debate that was taking place later that day, i said, all right, i actually don't know which way the conservative party is voting. what are you saying in your speech? they said, i have no idea. i haven't been told. i'm going to have to work it out when i get in there. it's so different. and it is why, however actually difficult and genuinely difficult it has been for people in the new government to adjust. they still, when you talk to them, i don't know if you two find this are still very quick to say things like, oh, but you know,

i'd trade any day of this. oh, totally. you know, any day of this, even the hardest day ever. for another moment in opposition. because opposition is so horrible, because you can't do anything and you're desperately trying to get noticed and you've hardly got any resources, and you're always on the back foot and you're always trying to work out what the government's next to do. and i think we're still in the middle of a massive kind of transition in our politics, but the thing that i've been thinking about in the last couple of days is that, you know, this last 72 hours does feel to me like we've just crossed a big junction. where the new parliament almost starts. and someone senior in government said to me, this is like week zero. so we know more about this government because we've had that flash of light that a budget is which illuminates what they're really all about, who their tribe is, what their choices are, what their priorities are in real and tangible ways when they own the decisions. and we now know the character or some of the character of the leader of the party, he's going to be up against them. and i do think that this weekend marks a really important sort of moment in, in that regard.

and it's kind of i don't know if you two agree. it seems to me, though, it's like labour's redder than people expected, and the tories will now be bluer than they have been for a while. so for people listening, i think we can expect this to feel like quite a classic right left period of politics. yeah, i think you've got the policies being set now, the personalities being set. you've got a prime minister who describes himself when asked i asked him during the campaign. i didn't expect him to answer it, but he did as a socialist. and then you've got a conviction, conservative whose instinct is to speak her mind. and as you say, i think that does sharpen the contrast of blue and red. and then also kind of set the landscape, policy and personality wise for the tussle to come after what really, i suppose, has been four months of shadow boxing, a labour party working out how to govern, and a conservative party working out how to reshape itself after a colossal defeat.

and henry, i don't know if you would agree with this, i think that labour believes they've said some quite clever traps for the new tory leader, and they'll challenge her to vote against things that might be very politically difficult. i think that's right. and one of the interesting differences between kemi badenoch and robert jenrick during the campaign was that robertjenrick was much more specific, consciously so specific about policies he would have as leader of the opposition and indeed that he would enact as prime minister if he became leader of the opposition and then won the next general election. kemi badenoch at times made a point of saying she thought that would be unwise, that you didn't know the circumstances of the next general election, let alone of the several years between now and that general election. and so she shouldn't make herself hostage to various or make herself hostage to fortune. and that's fine. but as leader of the opposition, issue by issue, parliamentary vote by parliamentary vote, she will have to instruct her mps to vote in certain ways. and so, bit by bit, she will

find herself being staked to certain positions. that's just how it works. so i'm sure you will see, exactly as you say, the labour government both trying to contrive ways to get the conservatives to oppose things that they think they are putting themselves on the wrong side of public opinion for but also as the debate on the budget continues and it will dominate parliament this week, whoever it is speaking for the conservatives, whether it's the old team or the new, you will have the labour government challenging them to say, ok, well, if you think we shouldn't have done this on national insurance, what elements of public spending would you get rid of? and of course, you will also have the added dynamic that for several years, at least, well, no, certainly for several years the labour government, the labour party will continue to argue that in large part they're clearing up the conservatives mess. and kemi badenoch was in the cabinet for the last two or three years of that time. it's really interesting, isn't it? if she had a blank page and she could choose the issues on which she can have a conversation, what do you think they would be? because, you know, as we've

said, labour is definitely going to try and put her into all sorts of boxes and make things very difficult. and with a majority of that size, it might not be that hard for them. but if she had a blank page, what issues do you think she would want to have a national conversation about where would she want to insert herself. i think for want of a better phrase, identity politics is a huge part of kemi badenoch s, uh, interest in politics. and by identity politics, i mean her opposition to what she sees as identity politics. and we should note, by the way, because we haven't in this podcast, kemi badenoch, and this is a huge thing, is the first black woman, british, nigerian to lead a political party in this country. she also is the fourth woman to lead the conservative party and the labour party have had none. that is a point that i'm sure conservatives will make. in fact, they have been making it already. but kemi badenoch believes that the labour party and the state more generally is in hock to identity politics in a way that she doesn't believe it should be.

um, you know, she was equalities minister under both liz truss and rishi sunak and has, um, very different views to what has been the political consensus, including the conservatives, i think for much of the recent period about, for example, the equality act and the way in which the public sector operates on that, and then a kind of related thing, which i expect her to get involved in in a big way is immigration, and not necessarily in the way that robertjenrick did, which was about numbers and bringing it down. but she believes, and this was a big part of when you last interviewed her at conservative party conference, she believes there's been failures of integration. yeah, and i'm sure that will be a huge part of what we hear from her and what she chooses to focus on as leader. and particularly on those big ticket issues of daily politics that we haven't heard her way into with quite the same extent. because of that, if you like more cultural focus and also the nature of the jobs that she did in government as well, and how she deals with that, having run a very policy light campaign,

but one where you're then going to be forced day by day to start taking these more binaryjudgments on which way you go, which way you're going to vote and which way you where you're going to oppose. and then as well, which fights does she choose to pick? i think it's going to be fascinating. it's become a bit of a cliche around here, but it's a cliche because it's true that she's willing to pick fights and her supporters are the first to acknowledge that. but which ones are she willing to pick? and alongside that, what about her capacity? because we've seen this in the past for her to put her foot in her mouth. so take that day on the sunday of party conference, laura, where you spoke to her and spoke to her in great detail about that fascinating argument she made around culture and immigration and integration, and that was seen by her team to be a discretionary example of something where she was going to make a distinctive argument and try and win that argument. a couple of hours later, she gets herself in an almighty argument and try and

win that argument. a couple of hours later, she gets herself in an almighty tangle around the whole question of maternity pay. it was another all almighty row, but one that she hadn't intended to provoke. and what is the split between those two things in the coming weeks and months as she adjusts to this newjob? and as an opposition leader, it's worth saying again, we've hinted at it before, but it's really worth spelling out, you have to fight to get noticed. the government's got a big machine. they've got a big media machine, they've got a big policy machine, they dominate parliament. and as the opposition leader, there is nothing automatic about you getting noticed. and picking fights is a tactic that's used by plenty of politicians, sometimes to great effect. but whether the fight she ends up in are the ones of her own choosing, or the ones that happen by accident, is going to be a fascinating kind of balance to actually to, to see as it develops. but, you know, somebody suggested to me that she was one of those heineken politicians, which people used to say about borisjohnson, you know, he's a conservative that can reach other parts of the electorate that other other conservatives can't. but also like a can of heineken, it can get foamy

and explode everywhere and end up creating a mess. and i should point out to newscasters under the kind of terribly advanced age that i am, there was a very famous slogan about heineken being the beer that could reach other parts of refreshes, other parts that other beers couldn't reach. somebody in the building looked at me in disbelief when i started talking about heineken. when i started talking about heineken politicians. it made me feel very, very old. but there we go. we're happy to explain. do you think, lastly to both of you, i'm fascinated by this. do you think that people around kemi badenoch and perhaps kemi badenoch herself really think that given the size of the labour majority, they can win the next election? yes, i do. and i think that keir starmer is the best argument for that. and i don't mean in the sense that it's obvious that keir starmer will lose the next general election. i mean, the fact that keir starmer won the last general election, even though almost everybody, including most of his team, thought that it was preposterous that keir starmer would be able to lead the labour party

from such a devastating defeat in 2019 to victory in 2024. there are two schools of thought about the last general election broadly in westminster. one is that the conservatives messed up to a historic degree, and that ushered in a labour government that will be there for 3 to four terms, as generally happens to be the case between labour and the conservatives. but the other school of thought is that we are in a new era of volatility, and that the electorate are more willing to change things up between elections than ever before. and that is a theory that i have heard again and again from supporters of kemi badenoch, who do absolutely believe that they could do this in one term. and i would say, laura, to answer your question, yes, but with two caveats. so caveat one is the psychology of being an opposition leader, which is that you kind of have to believe that from the start. otherwise, you drive yourself nuts within about 45 minutes, let alone four years. so you have to believe it and you have to authentically

believe it whilst being, you know, realistic about the challenge that you face. the other thing that some people around kemi badenoch are cautioning her about is don't confuse a bumpy first few months for a government and poll ratings for the prime minister, cratering with that necessarily meaning, there is suddenly overwhelming enthusiasm for the conservative party, there are plenty saying to her, look, the definitive verdict of the general election was a wholesale rejection of the conservative party, rather than necessarily a loving embrace of labour and rebuilding that brand. a loving embrace of labour and rebuilding that brand, firstly, to the point where people will even listen to you, it's back to your point about getting noticed, and then secondly, building a prospectus that is wide enough, broad enough, appealing enough to be able to win a general election is a colossal challenge. but as henry was reflecting on that sense of volatility, creating an environment where kind of anything is possible, where precedents, wherever they have existed, have been smashed. because, you know,

if she allows herself to compare herself to the last time the conservatives fell out of government and were tonked at an election 1997, it took them four attempts to find a leader who went on to be prime minister. so they kind of have to hope that things are different now and they do think that they are. and hey, you know, as we've all discovered in the last few years, who'd be who'd be daft enough to predict politics two, three, four years ahead? anything's possible. anything's possible in politics, and anything's possible on saturday newscast, even the three of us being reunited for a very, i hope, very interesting, vigorous chat about the new leader of the opposition. thank you both very much indeed forjoining me. there'll be tonnes more from you across the bbc later in the day, and i will be back tomorrow for sunday's newscast, as well as on bbc one at 9:00 and on the iplayer. goodbye for now. bye bye. goodbye.

to be as stony faced

as they possibly could be.

live from london, this is bbc news. in the final weekend before tuesday's vote, the us presidential candidates rally through battleground states where this election will be won or lost. the head of the spanish region worst affected by this week's deadly flash floods has defended its emergency response amidst criticism that it should have been better. translation: i know that in our reuion we translation: i know that in our region we are — translation: i know that in our region we are going _ translation: i know that in our region we are going through - translation: i know that in our region we are going through the | region we are going through the worst moment in our history, a moment that no one could ever have imagined would happen. as polio vaccinations in gaza resume, the head of

the world health organization says a number of people have been injured in an israeli strike on a clinic. and here in the uk, kemi badenoch wins the race to become the new leader of the conservative party — the first black woman to lead a major political party in britain. to be heard, we have to be honest. honest about the fact that we made mistakes. that we let standards slip. we've made it to the final weekend of campaigning before the us presidential election, and democratic nominee kamala harris and her republican rival donald trump are busy crisscrossing the key election battlegrounds. right now, harris is in atlanta, georgia, and trump is in gastonia, north carolina. here's some of what the candidates had to say a short time ago. you know what we're going to do? we're going to drill, baby, drill like you've never seen before.

cheering.