London local elections 2026: 'We're very optimistic' at regaining Westminster, Wandsworth and Barnet, says Badenoch

Kemi Badenoch told of her optimism that the Conservatives will win back their former “crown jewel” London councils of Westminster, Wandsworth and Barnet at the May 7 local elections .

She hit out at Nigel Farage for being “triumphant” before polling day after he told The Standard that Reform UK would win Havering in east Outer London.

She also laid out how “close” the contests are between the Tories and Reform in Bexley and Bromley.

In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with The Standard, the Conservative leader:
* Said it was becoming “fashionable” to be antisemitic at dinner parties in London and other parts of Britain.

* Described Golders Green as the “frontline” in the rise in antisemitism blighting the UK, with the double stabbing last week.

* She pressed for a moratorium on pro-Palestinian marches in the capital which she said were “more anti-Jewish than they are pro-Palestine people”.

* Blamed Iran for arson attacks on London.

* Called for more driverless Tube trains to cut the number of strikes causing travel misery for Londoners .

Political parties are this week ramping up their campaigns with just days to go until the May 7 elections for councils in England, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.

Asked if the Tories will win back Westminster, Wandsworth and Barnet, which they lost to Labour in 2022, Mrs Badenoch said: “Everybody can see they have all got worse since Labour took over.

With polls suggesting a close contest in all three boroughs , she added: “We know that a lot of people were disappointed in Conservatives a couple of years ago.

That's why we had our historic defeat.

“So there's a long journey back but we are making inroads and I would love to see Barnet, Westminster and Wandsworth come back.”
The Tory leader then turned her fire onto Mr Farage: “He's already triumphant, proclaiming that he's already won Havering.

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“That's quite an arrogant attitude to take.

“We trust voters.

We know that many people don't make up their mind until the day.

“We know a multi-party era means all sorts of things can happen.

So we're fighting for every vote.”
On a visit to Bexley, she pointed to the “chaos that Reform has created” just over the border in Kent.

“They've lost so many of their councillors, they promised savings with their Doge (Department of Government Efficiency), they didn't find any savings, because guess what?

Conservatives had already done that,” she said.

“Instead, they whacked up council tax after promising to cut it and gave themselves more money for allowances.”
Seeking to win over voters from across the political spectrum in the largely two-way contests in Bexley and Bromley, she added: “People who want Conservatives must come out and vote Conservative, and those people who don't want Reform must come out and vote Conservative as well.”
The Tories won just over 400 seats at the 2022 borough elections and local government expert Tony Travers, from the London School of Economics, believes they may fall to a new historic low, possibly losing around 100 more.

“What Tony is talking about is the change from two-party to multi-party,” Mrs Badenoch said, in an apparent sign of how tough it may be for the Tories at the polls in just a few days’ time.

“When it was binary, you had a different threshold.

But when there's so many parties fighting for these seats, the threshold changes.”
Mrs Badenoch also warned how antisemitism was spreading in London and other parts of the UK as the nation still reels from the Golders Green stabbings and string of arson attacks on Jewish sites in the north of the city.

“It is becoming more and more acceptable to be antisemitic at dinner parties across the country,” she said.

“People think it's becoming fashionable again.

We need to make it shameful to be antisemitic.

“Lots of people are treating this as a fad.

The new faddish thing to discuss is how you're anti-Zionist, which is often a cover for antisemitism.”
She stressed that Jewish people in Britain are “under siege” with antisemitism spiralling.

She partly blamed the Tehran regime, with MI5 and counter-terrorism police having thwarted 20 terror plots linked to Iran in just a year.

“What we're seeing is actually stoking of antisemitism by countries like Iran,” she said.

“ Terror plots that have been foiled have been Iranian backed, Iranian linked.

We know they try and recruit people to carry out fire bombings and other things at synagogues.”
She also called for a moratorium on pro-Gaza marches which she said “are more anti-Jewish than they are pro-Palestine people”.

On transport, Mrs Badenoch was clear how she would seek to stop London being blighted by strikes by the militant RMT union: “Driverless trains don't strike.”
She doubted the Government’s leasehold reforms and Renters Rights Act, which would end no-fault evictions, target unfair rent hikes, and stop bidding wars.

will work, arguing: “All that's happened is that landlords are selling up.

“A lot of the young people who work for me are saying that they're finding it harder and harder to rent.”
On tackling crime in London, she backed more stop-and-search, more live facial recognition in crime hot spots, “immediate justice” with on-the-spot fines for graffiti and anti-social behaviour to “take back our streets,” and 10,000 more police officers nationwide, including many in London.

She stressed that Conservative councils seek to keep council tax “as low as possible” but warned that “cuts will be harder” to ensure money is “spent wisely”.

To address the cost-of-living, the Tories are pledging to cut energy bills by £200 by scrapping Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband’s green taxes.

With up to a million jobs in London at risk from artificial intelligence , she emphasised that AI is a “threat and an opportunity”.

She added: “The only way that we can make sure that we get the opportunity and diminish the threat is by making this a good country for AI companies to invest.

“We can help create the guardrails around that, but that, again, is energy.

“We're not going to get data centres here if we don't have cheaper energy.

“Other countries like the US and China are going to get streets ahead unless we sort out our energy problem.”
Mrs Badenoch, like Sir Keir Starmer, had a shaky start at the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions clashes but both of them have improved at the despatch box.

“I enjoy it because I'm able to be the voice of the whole country, telling Keir Starmer how terrible a job he's doing,” she said before heading off again on the campaign trail.