ENGLAND — Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch defended her party's record at a press conference in Merseyside ahead of local elections, presenting the Tories as the party of working people and rejecting characterizations made by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. She said no one had ever described her as aloof and remote, and accused the Labour government of being interested only in welfare.

Farage had described Scousers as down to earth and said the Tories were aloof and remote. Badenoch responded by pointing to a recent gift to the Reform UK leader.

"Nigel Farage can say as much as he wants that he's the one who's down to earth. Someone just gave him a £5m gift t'other day. I don't know what's down to earth about that." Badenoch said.

She said the Conservatives were committed to keeping council tax as low as possible but were not promising to cut it, unlike Reform UK, which she said could not deliver on such a pledge. She urged voters to back Conservative councillors, whom she described as "not drama queens" and "not playing games," and argued that Conservative-run councils were better managed than councils run by other parties.

Asked by a journalist whether Merseyside was a lost cause for the Tories, Badenoch defended the party's prospects. Pressed by Sarah Gorrell on whether councils were struggling because of the funding record left by the last Conservative government, she maintained her case for Conservative local administration.

Gorrell also raised Badenoch's time as a student at the University of Sussex, suggesting that leftwing students she encountered there had helped make her a rightwinger. Badenoch described students at the university as "spoilt, entitled, privileged, metropolitan elite in training," though she said she did not know the students currently there. She said she was now seeing in the Labour government the same "silly things" she had encountered in student politics.

Badenoch said she wanted the Conservatives to win as many seats as possible in London and to win back councils they had lost, citing Westminster as an example. She declined to set a target for the number of seats she expected the party to win in the capital. She said she had spent much of the past month focusing on energy policy and petrol prices.

"It's not a TV show, this is real life. Having a prime minister who appointed someone who is a national security risk affects your residents, your listeners. It is a problem if we cannot defend our country because someone who had links to Russian companies that were closely linked to the Kremlin was appointed American ambassador," Badenoch said.