Kemi Badenoch’s maternity pay blunder of her ‘own making’
Ms Badenoch said maternity pay has gone 'too far'
by Shiler Mahmoudi · The MirrorTory leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch has been under fire for her comments regarding maternity pay.
During a car-crash interview on Sunday, she said that maternity pay is "excessive" and had gone “too far”.
The Tory MP, who is vying to replace Rishi Sunak, faced a wave of backlash and was accused of being “out of touch” and treating women like "second class citizens".
She said families need to have "more personal responsibility" when asked about people who can't afford to have a baby.
Speaking on The Division Bell podcast, The Mirror ’s Lizzie Buchan said: “There are so many moments and where things can go wrong. You can be tripped up by something another campaign could overtake.
“It’s the ones that really focus that will go the distance. I think you could see we started this conference on Sunday and most of Sunday was taken up with a row about what Kemi Badenoch had or hadn't said about maternity pay yet.”
“She went around saying I've been misquoted. And then sharing the interview that she did with Times Radio where she said exactly what everyone said she said, which is that she thought maternity pay was excessive."
Ms Badenoch rowed back on her comments later that night after widespread criticism, claiming “of course” she believes in maternity pay.
She even compared herself to Margaret Thatcher after claiming she was misunderstood over her comments on maternity pay.
Lizzie said:“I just thought, why? What was the point? And then eventually all the other candidates sort of criticised her and then she wrote back and claimed she never said that.”
“That was also after she'd written a piece in the Telegraph saying that not all cultures are equally valid when it comes to immigration and then sort of refused to take questions on that on that. So you can see there's a there are lots of pitfalls sometimes of the candidate's own making.”
Ms Badenoch - who receives a comfortable MP salary - has also hit out minimum wage.
Speaking at a Q&A event at Conservative Party conference on Monday, she said: “There’s a café in my constituency that closed down, and the lady who owned it said, ‘I can’t afford to pay the wages any more. I can’t afford minimum wage. I can’t afford for my staff to go on [paid] maternity [leave]’. We are overburdening businesses. We are overburdening them with regulation, with tax. People aren’t starting businesses anymore because they’re too scared.”
It seems that Ms Badenoch failed to capture her audience at conference, and caused quite a snooze-fest.
Lizzie said: “I mean, one of my colleagues said that the man next to them was asleep during and snoring quite loudly during Kemi’s session. So, make of that what you will. He might have just had a really late night.