Badenoch attacks Starmer and Farage over welfare

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage of indulging in "fantasy economics" over their approaches to welfare policies.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Badenoch says both leaders believe in getting struggling taxpayers to "fund unlimited child support for others".

Her commentary comes after the Labour government indicated that it was looking at the possibility of scrapping the two-child benefit cap.

Farage said earlier this week that his party would also get rid of the policy and back more generous tax breaks for married people.

Badenoch added the country could not "afford their fantasy economics" and that Britain deserved leaders who did not "treat economics like a branch of showbiz".

"This week we have seen Labour and Reform in a race to the bottom to scrap the two-child benefit cap," she wrote.

"Starmer and Farage now believe in getting taxpayers - many of whom are struggling to raise their own children or choosing not to have them in the first place - to fund unlimited child support for others."

The Conservatives have said the policy - which they introduced - of limiting means-tested benefits to just two children in most families should not be scrapped.

Reform UK have pledged to remove the cap if they win power, but have not detailed how they would fund the billions it, and all their other pledges, would cost.

In a speech this week, Farage said he wanted to lift the cap "not because we support a benefits culture" but because it would ease the burden on lower-paid workers.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said the government is looking at scrapping the two-child benefit cap but warned it would "cost a lot of money".

Speaking on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show last week, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner refused to confirm whether the government would remove the policy.

Pressure has also grown from Labour backbenchers over the issue since the party's poor performance at the local elections earlier this year.

Badenoch's attack comes after Farage said this week the Conservatives had become an "irrelevance".

For his part, Sir Keir said the Conservatives had "run out of road", were in "decline" and "sliding into the abyss".

Badenoch argued her party was now "the only major political party to take a serious look at the welfare state".