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Kemi Badenoch heckled by climate change protesters

Kemi Badenoch heckled by climate change protesters

Telegraph17-03-2025

Kemi Badnenoch was heckled by two climate protestors during a speech praising the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.
The demonstrators were dragged from London's Guildhall on Monday after standing on their chairs to shout at the Tory leader about climate change and the distribution of wealth.
Mrs Badenoch had just begun her speech to close the Margaret Thatcher Conference, hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) think tank, which was founded by the late prime minister.
The first protestor stood on her chair less than a minute after Mrs Badenoch began speaking to shout: 'How can you sit here celebrating her?'
She unfurled a banner and heckled: 'The unfair distribution of wealth we see in this country and globally, Thatcher's Tories, your Tories, have been responsible for.'
The protestor was pulled down from her chair by CPS staff and escorted out.
The demonstrator shouted: 'You talk about the future of Conservatism. There will be no future if you allow billionaires and fossil fuel companies to keep driving climate breakdown and genocide from Gaza to Congo.'
Kemi Badenoch calmly responded to the first protest, saying from the stage 'I didn't actually hear anything she said', before adding: 'Clearly some are still quite terrified of Thatcher.'
A second protestor then stood up on their chair to heckle Mrs Badenoch before being escorted out.
A protest group called Climate Resistance was behind the action, according to one of the two hecklers.
One told the PA news agency that the Conservative Party had 'allowed extreme wealth to be amassed by a tiny minority, fuelling climate crisis and poverty '.
The woman, who did not provide a name, added: 'It's just shameful that this event exists. We should not be celebrating this person.'
'She put us on the path that we're on right now to this mass inequality we're seeing, the cost of living crisis, the housing crisis, the climate crisis, it's all connected to her.'
Mrs Badenoch said in response to the second heckler: 'It just seems to show that the Left still believe [Thatcher] is to blame for everything that is going wrong in their lives.
'And that is why it is so critical that all of us here honour Mrs Thatcher, not just as Britain's first female prime minister, but as the leader who saved our country from that lot.'
Mrs Badenoch, the Conservatives' fourth female leader, heaped praise on her predecessor, telling the conference: 'Margaret Thatcher understood that you don't fix a broken country by making the state bigger.
'You fix it by making the people stronger. And that is exactly what the Conservative Party under my leadership will do. And it starts with renewal.
'Just as she rebuilt Britain, we must renew our party, rebuild our country and save our future. Margaret Thatcher didn't fight to make Britain comfortable with decline. She fought to make it great again.'
She then quipped: 'Britain's future will not be written by the socialists shouting in the audience, it will not be written by the bureaucrats or the doom-mongers. It will be written by us.'
Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, later told a dinner to mark the conclusion of the conference that he was committed to making the Tories 'the party of enterprise' again.
He also told attendees that the Conservatives needed to 'be honest with the British people' and said that he was ready to tell 'a hard truth' about the economy.
Mr Griffith called for politicians to stop comparing the UK to the G7 nations, saying: 'With the exception of the US, that's just the club of other ageing, de-industrialising and low-growth economies. It's a major category error.'
Mr Griffith said that the UK needed to stop running in the 'seniors' race' of global economies and instead look to the G20 'as our pace car'.

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