Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has paid tribute to Lord Archer and told GB News that he messaged her yesterday morning to congratulate her.
In an interview, she said: “I’m going to miss Lord Archer very much. I couldn’t believe it when the news flashed last night. He sent me a message at 8:03am yesterday morning, saying, “Great outfit, great speech. No reply needed’.
“He was always messaging me with articles that he was seeing that he liked, saying I was doing a good job, and he’d be rude about people who he thought were saying mean things. So he was so kind and personally very generous to me. Both he and Lady Archer were, and I’m going to miss him very much.
“I saw him recently. I was also at his 60th wedding anniversary in the summer, and there’s so many people there who – friends and family – and he lived a very full life. He lived a great life, and the Conservative Party is going to miss him. The entire Conservative family will miss him very much.”
On the removal of US bombers from the UK, she said: “I think it is completely crazy that when we have the incident at RAF Fairford, the US is saying it’s taking its bombers out of our airbase, our defence ministers are saying they’re going to kick this into the long grass for another year.
“The defence secretary resigned from Keir Starmer’s government. He’s the chancellor now. He needs to find the money. And I’m not having it from Labour about what we did in government.
“When we were in government, they were asking us to spend less on defence. Jeremy Corbyn wanted us to disarm our nuclear missiles. He was saying we should leave NATO. So the idea that things would have been better under them is for the birds.
“It is true the defence spending went down. I’m not going to deny that. But we’re in a different era now. Back in those days, Russia was in the G8. We were having a golden age with China. We spent the peace dividend. We thought we were in an era of peace. We’re not in an era of peace anymore.
“We can’t fix the past. What are we going to do now to protect the country for the future? That’s what politicians should be doing. And the Conservative Party is the only party that is even talking about defence, let alone setting out a plan to get to 3% by 2030.”
Badenoch also appeared to cool expectations about possible changes to inheritance tax: “Everybody has to wait until 11:15 tomorrow to hear what’s in the speech. But people already know what I feel about inheritance taxes. I’ve given speeches on it. I think that they are too high.
“I’ve been very, very moved by the stories of farmers taking their own lives to try and avoid it, so that their children can have their family farms. The same thing with family businesses. It’s impacting people. But what I have said is that we’re not announcing anything until we find the money to pay for it.
“We are a fiscally responsible party. We’re fiscally credible. We don’t just cut taxes when we can’t afford it. Andrew Griffith, my shadow chancellor, gave a great speech yesterday talking about how we’re going to grow our economy, make our country richer, and then we’ll be able to afford the things that we need.”