Kemi Badenoch: “Defence of this country should be Andy Burnham’s number one priority.”

Yes, he is somebody who had been previously convicted but he is someone who has shown contrition for his crimes, has been rehabilitated and is spending every day working to solve the very problem which he knew that he had caused previously.

How do I work with people like that when I am making carefully curated plans and taking a systems-based approach?

I want to be very clear – and I think people can look at me and know that I’m not a person who would be recruiting neo-Nazis.

I’m not giving him a national platform, he is standing to be a councillor in Somerset … it is a local platform looking at parking, sorting out bins … I have much higher thresholds for what it takes to be a Conservative MP.