UK Conservative Leader Just Blindsided Donal Trump but Her Answer on Kamala Harris That Left Everyone Puzzled
Last year, Kemi Badenoch went on Fox News Radio to say Britain needed leadership like Donald Trump's.
Now a left-leaning British newspaper just asked the head of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party if Trump deserved the midterm thrashing.
And Donald Trump got blindsided when she gave one awful answer about Kamala Harris.
Badenoch Says Trump Earned His Midterm Losses
The conversation aired days after the midterms on the left-leaning Independent's Talk Show, hosted by editor-in-chief Geordie Greig.
When Greig asked whether Trump deserved to be thrashed, Badenoch didn't hesitate.
"Yeah," she said.
She blamed the Republican losses on Trump himself, calling them "entirely self-inflicted."
She complained that he was "always wanting to get dirty in terms of insults and so on."
Apparently fighting the left comes with etiquette rules, and Trump broke them.
She even admitted she finds him "very charming in person" – just not charming enough to defend in public.
Badenoch Shrugs at a Harris Presidency
Greig then asked the question any conservative on earth should answer in one breath.
Who did she prefer in 2024 – Trump or Harris?
"I would say I like them both equally," Badenoch said, then added there was "a double meaning" in that.
She said a Harris win wouldn't have bothered her.
This is Kamala Harris – the border czar who presided over record illegal crossings and couldn't think of one thing she'd have done differently from Joe Biden.
The leader of Britain's Conservatives looked at that record and called it a coin flip.
Tariffs, Greenland, and a Defense of Keir Starmer
Badenoch went down her list of complaints like a cable news panelist.
"What's the first thing he does? Tariffs, and then talking about Greenland and Canada," she said.
She insisted tariffs drive up the cost of living and that "America First" economics doesn't count as conservatism.
She described what happened to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House as "awful."
She also pinned part of the midterm damage on the war with Iran – a war she says she supported.
Then she came to the defense of Labour's Keir Starmer – the man she is supposed to be trying to beat.
"When he was rude about Keir Starmer… I didn't like that at all," she said.
Britain's opposition leader is now guarding the Labour leader's feelings from the American president.
Badenoch Sang a Different Tune a Year Ago
Her Fox News Radio appearance came in October 2025, with host Guy Benson.
The network promoted it as Badenoch explaining that Britain's "weak" government could use a leader like Trump.
Thirteen months later, she's cheering his thrashing.
Contrast that with Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK spent much of her tenure running ahead of her party in the polls.
In his first interview after the midterms, Farage still gave Trump credit for a "booming" American economy, U.S. energy exports, and shutting down the southern border.
One British politician remembered who closed the border.
The other remembered every mean tweet.
The Immigration Record Badenoch Doesn't Talk About
Badenoch lecturing anyone on conservatism takes nerve.
Breitbart, pointing to parliamentary records, reports that she pushed in 2018 to scrap the limit on work visas.
Of course, it’s clear more than a few voters noticed Trump did the same thing on H1B visas.
Breitbart notes Badenoch was also part of the Boris Johnson government, which never put a cap on immigration after Brexit as the numbers soared.
Her defense, according to Breitbart, has been that the government wanted lower immigration but "ministers didn't notice" it rising.
They didn't notice.
A Conservative Who Can't Tell Trump From Harris
The one thing that should fire up every American conservative is this – a woman who inherited the worst Tory defeat in history thinks she can grade Trump's homework.
Her party got wiped out in 2024 by British voters fed up with mass immigration and a political class that shrugged at them.
Trump won that same year because American voters were fed up with the same thing, and he actually closed the border.
Badenoch's prescription is free trade, polite manners, and a shrug at a Harris presidency.
That's the same country-club Toryism that handed Britain to Labour in the first place.
American conservatives don't need a lecture on principles from a party that couldn't hold on to its own voters.
And if Badenoch truly likes Kamala Harris and Donald Trump "both equally," British conservatives just learned more about their leader than any poll could tell them.
Sources:
- Kurt Zindulka, "UK 'Conservative' Party Leader Says Trump Deserved to Lose Midterms, Decries 'Dirty' Style of Politics," Breitbart News, November 8, 2026.
- Simon Walters, "'Dirty' Trump deserved to be thrashed in the US midterms, says Kemi Badenoch," The Independent, November 2026.
- "Kemi Badenoch: The 'Weak' U.K. Government Could Use a Leader Like Trump," Fox News Radio, October 20, 2025.
