decision time, the race to lead. good evening. i'm christopher hope. please welcome kemi badenoch and robert jenrick . to badenoch and robert jenrick. to mish rahman. >> sukh anthony segaert love. you're here. thank you. >> tonight, both candidates face a grilling from this audience here in the heart of westminster as they battle for the right to lead the tory party. tonight's audience is made up of conservative party members , the conservative party members, the ones who will help decide the next leader in just 14 days time. it's been 85 days. yes, 85 days since campaigning started.

but now it's decision time. some of you watching at home will have your pens hovering over the ballot paper right now. but this isn't just a matter for the tory party. these two behind me want to be your next prime minister. and this is your first proper chance to size them up over the next two hours. these two politicians will be quizzed by the audience , and i'll be posing the audience, and i'll be posing some of the questions that you have submitted from home. of course, you can get involved and join the debate as ever by going to gb news .com forward slash yoursay or by scanning the qr code that's on screen right now. we'll also have full reaction and analysis throughout the evening . evening. >> at 9:00 i'll be joined right here in the gb news studio with a live studio audience . there we a live studio audience. there we go. and a stellar political cast, including labour's lucy

rigby, reform uk chairman dear yusuf, former conservative minister ranil jayawardena and lib dem shadow cabinet minister christine jardine. what happens tonight on gb news is going to shape the future of british politics. this is the after sun to the political love island, who will steal the hearts of the tory members tonight, but more importantly, who will win the hearts of the nation .7 hearts of the nation.7 >> this is decision time, the race to lead live on gb news now. in the interest of fairness, earlier today we flipped a coin to see which candidate will be first to face your questions today. so far of campaigning. 14 more days to go. the voting packs have arrived. members who watched gb news and 400 or so in this room maybe have voted already or are poised to vote. but tonight we've got a

leadership event between kemi badenoch behind me and robert jenrick, and right now i'm going to toss a coin to find out who goes first. so back up here kemi badenoch will you call, please? >> heads. heads. >> heads. heads. >> tails is kemi badenoch you want to go first or second? robert. >> i'll go first. chris. >> i'll go first. chris. >> okay. and there we have it. michelle. robert jenrick first live on seven at 7:00 pm here on gb news. so there we have it. robert jenrick will go first. please take to the floor. mr jenrick thanks, chris. >> well good evening everyone. >> well good evening everyone. >> like most of you, i've been a conservative all my life in the good times and the bad. i've always believed that this party is our country's best hope. so we've got to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves down. we've got to end the drama, end the excuses and just deliver for our

country by growing our economy, by fixing our nhs, by strengthening our armed forces. but friends , if we want to do but friends, if we want to do any of those things, if we want to get our party back in business, we've got to begin by delivering on immigration. and let me tell you why. in towns across our country right now, like the ones that i grew up in, in wolverhampton and the town i represent in nottinghamshire, there are hotels which should be full of tourists, but instead are full of illegal migrants. and this is just the tip of the iceberg. when i was for minister immigration, i saw things that made me angry . immigration, i saw things that made me angry. but i know how to fix this . immigration is not fix this. immigration is not just another issue amongst many. it is the issue which explains

why our party is where it is right now. it's the reason that we lost 4 million of our people to reform at the general election, and millions more who decided to stay at home. you know who those people are? whose trust we lost and we've got to get them back. if we don't get them back home to our party, we'll never be in government again. so we've got to change the party. as a result, we've got to ensure that once again, we are trusted on immigration. and i know how to do that. it begins by ensuring that we end the drama. we end the excuses, and we just get serious on this

issue . and the first topic, of issue. and the first topic, of course, is illegal migration. and on that , the real choice and on that, the real choice facing our country is on the european convention on human rights. this foreign court creates an arsenal of laws which prevents us from removing foreign terrorists and criminals and illegal migrants. if we don't detain and deport people within days, we'll never be able to stop the boats. and if we don't do that, then we will keep on losing. you can't reform the european court. it requires the unanimous approval of 46 member states . but if we leave, then we states. but if we leave, then we can write a british bill of rights . and we can ensure that

rights. and we can ensure that we bring the insanity to an end. so there's a clear choice here. it's leave or remain. and i'm for leave . and on. on the for leave. and on. on the millions of people who've come into our country legally . we into our country legally. we also have a choice. we could continue as we have hundreds of thousands coming in every year. pressure on housing, on public services, on cohesion or we can get parliament to set a cap on legal migration and ensure that we bring down the numbers. it's another clear choice. it's a cap or no cap. and i'm for capping migration . two clear choices migration. two clear choices leave or remain. cap or no cap.

for i'm leave. i'm for capping migration. if we do those things, then we can win again. we can earn a hearing from the pubuc we can earn a hearing from the public on all the other things that we care about, like growing our economy, strengthening our defences, fixing our nhs. so i say, let's get serious on migration . let's end the drama. migration. let's end the drama. let's end the excuses. let's deliver again for the people of this country . and then once this country. and then once again, we can win back the voters that we lost. we can get back into government and we can begin to deliver for the people of this country. once more. thank you very much . thank you. thank you very much. thank you. >> thank you . thank you . >> thank you. thank you. >> thank you. thank you.

>> thank you. robert. our first question is from nick mclean from wimbledon . nick, where are from wimbledon. nick, where are you? there you are, sir. thank you. >> good evening. robert. how will you regain control of our narrative so that we have confidence in ourselves and our conservative values? >> well, very good question, nick. and look, i joined this party aged 16, in wolverhampton after the 1997 election. there were not many 16 year old conservatives in wolverhampton in 1997, not many conservatives in 1997, not many conservatives in wolverhampton in 1997. but i've been a conservative ever since and this party matters to me . i want to see it back in me. i want to see it back in government and the way to do thatis government and the way to do that is to ensure that we get serious again, that we tackle the biggest issues facing this country. and i think that does begin with migration, because if we don't regain the public's trust on that issue , if we don't trust on that issue, if we don't get back the millions of voters that we've lost to reform, we're just never going to be in government again. and i'm not

applying today just to be leader of the opposition. i want to be our next prime minister, and that means the party has to get serious. so let's fix let's fix that issue. and i have a very clear path to doing so. and once we've done that, then we can get on to all the other issues that we care about. as conservatives, which we'll never get the opportunity to do if we don't get back into power . get back into power. >> on migration there. on net migration, on your watch ballooned. i mean, you made a stand over rwanda, but you oversaw huge increases in net migration. you broke that manifesto promise. it helped reform win those votes. >> well, look, chris, i am as angry and frustrated about that as anyone else. ultimately, that's why i chose to resign as minister from the cabinet at the time. and i fought relentlessly to secure the biggest changes to our legal migration system in decades. they will reduce the number of people coming into this country by 300,000 every yean this country by 300,000 every year, and you'll just starting

to see that come through in the 1501 00: