Q: Do you see any merit in President Trump’s travel ban on people coming from 12 countries? Would you do something similar?
Badenoch says parliament should be able to decide who is allowed to come into the country, and that should include being able to impose “travel bans on a country-specific basis”.
But she says that does not mean she is endorsing the Trump proposal. She says she has not looked at the list of countries that he has banned.
UPDATE: Badenoch said:
Parliament needs to be able to decide who comes into the country, for how long, and who needs to leave, and that does include travel bans. On a country-specific basis it’s much tougher, it’s often more vague. But I think there are scenarios where that is viable.
That doesn’t mean that I agree with what Donald Trump has done, I haven’t actually seen the list of countries that he’s banned people from. I’m much more focused on … what’s happening here.
Rachel Keenan is a Guardian reporter.
John Swinney, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, has offered a relatively positive take on his party’s defeat in the Hamilton byelection.
Speaking at a low-key press conference this morning (much of the Scottish media were at Labour’s victory rally instead), Swinney argued that the result could be seen as a modest victory for the SNP in the circumstances. He explained:
Last summer people would have doubted, after the really poor result we had in the UK general election, that the SNP could be back in contention to win a seat like Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, but we were in contention and only 600 votes adrift from winning it.
The SNP has made progress in this election. It’s not as much as I would like us to have made, but we’ve made progress against the backdrop of a really damaging election last summer.
Many were surprised that Labour did not seem to be the SNP’s priority when campaigning in this byelection with their line focussing on the rise of Reform UK. Using the line “vote SNP to stop Reform UK”, Swinney said he was just following what he was hearing on the doors while out campaigning.
People were telling us on doorsteps of their anger and frustration at the Labour party because of things like winter fuel payments being abolished and they weren’t going to vote for the Labour party.
But also, on the same sessions on the doorsteps, [we were hearing] that people were planning to vote Reform.
The confluence of those two things meant that I had to say our message was the SNP could stop Reform. I certainly don’t want the poisonous politics of Farage to be imported into the Scottish parliament.
Despite the majority of votes going towards pro union parties, the first minister still thinks that there is an appetite for independence in Scotland and said: “Fundamentally people’s views about independence are strengthening.”
He also said that going forward the party would be “making sure that people see independence as a real and urgent priority that can make a difference in their lives”.
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
Despite the hyperbole from Richard Tice about the Hamilton byelection result on the Today programme (see 9.39am), Reform has not actually come from “nowhere” in Scotland.
There has long been a Eurosceptic vote in Scotland, sometimes active or at times latent, and Nigel Farage, Reform’s leader, has campaigned here before, in his previous guise as leader of the UK Independence party.
In 2014 he capitalised on that strain of nativist Euroscepticism when Ukip won a Scottish region seat in the European parliament – the year Scotland was immersed in the independence referendum debate. And in 2016, more than 1m Scots voted to leave the EU in the Brexit referendum – 38% of the votes cast.
The Reform brand may be relatively new in Scotland but its leader is not a fresh face, nor is the sentiment and attitude it seeks to represent – notwithstanding the other question of whether Reform’s role this time is largely as a conduit for protest votes from the large minority of voters disillusioned and angered by the incumbents in both the Scottish and UK government.
Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent.
It’s a sunny morning in Hamilton town centre and a jubilant Scottish Labour head of comms has just presented the press pack with an apple pie (“they didn’t have any humble pie in the shop”) after the party’s surprise win in yesterday’s key byelection, which defied the predictions of pretty much every journalist gathering there.
The newly elected MSP for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, Davy Russell, was congratulated by politicians and party workers as Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar told reporters:
The SNP’s balloon has burst, the people have changed their minds, they know the SNP have failed them and they want them out from office.
What this byelection has proven beyond any doubt is that if you want to get rid of the SNP, then the election next year is a straight choice between me and John Swinney. Reform might try to be a spoiler factor, but they can’t win here, they have no care for here. It’s between us and the SNP.
Sarwar said the byelection made it clear too that it was time for “the pollsters, pundits, political commentators, and the bookies to stop believing John Swinney’s nonsense”.
The SNP leader and first minister had described this byelection as a two-horse race between his party and Reform UK. But in the end the SNP, which had previously held the seat, were pushed into second place, only narrowly beating Reform UK by less than 1,000 votes.
At the rally, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader Jackie Baillie said this contest demonstrated that “talking to people and doing to work on the doorstep is absolutely vital to how we win”.
Other Labour figures, even those not brandishing pies of any kind, pointed out that the party had made a conscious decision to focus on the ground campaign, which is largely invisible to the national media but secured them victory in the end.
Q: If you think the defence review does not go far enough fast enough, what would you do differently?
Badenoch said the defence review unravelled because the government does not have a plan for getting defence spending to 3% of GDP. The Tories would address that, for example with welfare cuts, she said.
That was the final question.
Q: Labour people says they now regard Reform UK as the real threat, not you. How do you feel about that.
Badenoch replied:
I laugh when they say that because I know it’s nonsense.
They would love to have Reform as the main challenger. They’d love that. Reform is another leftwing party. They’re arguing for the same things, nationalisation, two-child benefit, cap. They would love to have a political fight like that. I don’t pay any attention to what they say.
She said Labour would be facing the Conservative party at the next election “and we’re going to get them out”.
Q: What is your strategy for dealing with Reform UK?
Badenoch said Tories have different views; some want to ignore them, some want to fight them, some want to copy them. The Tories are a ‘“broad church”, she said. She went on:
What I have said is that there is only one strategy that’s going to work, and that is making sure that we have the best product.
There’s no point fretting or worrying about what other parties are doing unless you make sure that the products or the content which you have is the very best. So let’s take it from there.
It’s not about me growing taller or looking prettier. It is about making sure that what we are communicating represents the authentic, traditional conservative values. That is what I stand for.
She said the party needed to talk about their principles and values to show people what they stand for.
Q: Isn’t there a risk that, by the time you have decided your policy, voters will have already left the Conservatives?
Badenoch said she completetly disagreed. She said she remembers when the SDP/Liberal Alliance was polling at 50%.
And, on Reform UK, she said the Zia Yusuf, who resigned as Reform chair yesterday, has concluded that getting the party elected is a waste of time. She went on:
He knows something that the rest of us do not. I think we should be paying attention to that. Rather than talking up a party that’s losing as many people as quickly as they are coming in, we need to start getting serious and stop treating politics like show business.
Q: How do you response to Mel Stride saying yesterday you will get better at PMQs and the media? Do you think you need to get better?
Badenoch said she did accept that as leader of the opposition you get better over time.
People often assume that the minute you come into a job like the leader of the opposition, you’re ready to go. It actually takes quite a while to learn how to do the job.
And what I have been saying is that every week it gets better and better, every week I have more experience.
And this is what every leader of the opposition has found. From Margaret Thatcher to David Cameron, that is what it has been like.
So when people assume that what they see on day one is what they’re going to get in four years, they’re completely forgetting that so much happens. The situation changes.
Q: Do you see any merit in President Trump’s travel ban on people coming from 12 countries? Would you do something similar?
Badenoch says parliament should be able to decide who is allowed to come into the country, and that should include being able to impose “travel bans on a country-specific basis”.
But she says that does not mean she is endorsing the Trump proposal. She says she has not looked at the list of countries that he has banned.
UPDATE: Badenoch said:
Parliament needs to be able to decide who comes into the country, for how long, and who needs to leave, and that does include travel bans. On a country-specific basis it’s much tougher, it’s often more vague. But I think there are scenarios where that is viable.
That doesn’t mean that I agree with what Donald Trump has done, I haven’t actually seen the list of countries that he’s banned people from. I’m much more focused on … what’s happening here.
Q: Under your plan (see 11.19am), you would have to send illegal migrants to a third country. Would it be Rwanda?
Badenoch says she thinks the Rwanda plan should never have been scrapped.
Q: There are reports today the Parthenon Marbles will be returned to Greece. Would you support that?
Badenoch says she has not received those reports. She would like to see the details. But she goes on:
But I’ve never been someone who thought we should send the Elgin Marbles back.
Q: Are you saying you don’t believe the Council of Europe’s secretary general when he says reform of the ECHR might be possible? (See 11.15am.)
Badenoch says she read Alain Berset’s Times interview. She says Berset sounded like someone who had had his arm twisted. Previous attempts to reform the convention did not last. “So I’m not convinced,” she says.
She says, if the European court of human rights does reform over the next four years, that will be fine.
But she has to be prepared for that not happening, she says.
Q: Isn’t this too little, too late, given how well Reform is doing?
Badenoch rejects that. She says she has time to develop policy, and she says she is going to use that time properly.
What I want us to do is something serious and proper. Just going on TV and making noise is not governing. And quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing politicians make promises that they don’t know how to deliver.
Q: Is there a chance this review could end with you concluding that the UK should stay in the ECHR?
Badenoch says she does not want to announce that the UK will leave the ECHR without a plan. She says almost every member of her shadow cabinet has identified the convention as an obstacle to what they want to do.
