Tories nearly ran out of money as donors deserted them after humiliating election defeat, says Badenoch

The Conservative Party nearly went bankrupt after their worst-ever election defeat as donors considered pulling their funding, Kemi Badenoch has admitted.

The Tory leader said she spent her first few months in office “working furiously behind the scenes”, which she said led some to think she was “not doing anything”.

Speaking to BBC Newscast after one year as Conservative Party leader, Mrs Badenoch said keeping donors on side “actually took quite a lot of quite a lot of my time”, saying she wished she had spent more time “out there a bit more”.

But she added: “Without money, a party can’t survive.”

Asked if there was risk that the Conservatives could have gone bankrupt, the Tory leader said: “Yes, there was.”

Mrs Badenoch came to the helm of the party after a leadership contest triggered by Rishi Sunak’s resignation in the wake of the 2024 general election drubbing, which saw the party lose 250 seats.

Over the last year, the Tory leader has slowly started to craft a new policy platform for the party, insisting she will rebuild the Conservatives’ vision for Britain – but there is growing talk of a leadership challenge amid poor approval ratings.

Senior Tory sources told The Independent that she will have to go if the party is hit by another terrible set of results in the May elections in Wales, Scotland and English local councils – with Robert Jenrick the favourite to succeed her.

But Mrs Badenoch said: “This first year of my leadership has been about rebuilding. Rebuilding our party, our principles and our plan for Britain.

“After defeat in 2024, we faced a choice: retreat into slogans, or rebuild around values. We chose to rebuild.

“The Conservative Party now stands once again for what made Britain strong in the first place – responsibility, fairness, competence and pride in our nation.”

She also pointed to the large number of donations the party had received over the last year, an area where it has outperformed its political rivals.

“At the same time as we rebuild, we have stayed united, raised more money than the other parties combined and exposed the hypocrisy of Labour’s behaviour and the weakness of their policies, forcing U-turns on winter fuel payments, grooming gangs and welfare cuts,” Mrs Badenoch said.

She added: “I’ve spent this year giving the country a serious alternative to Labour’s weakness: a plan for a stronger economy and stronger borders.

“The Conservatives have set out detailed, costed policies to cut waste, lower taxes, control immigration and reward work. We’ve shown how to fix welfare, stop the boats, cut energy bills and make work pay again.”

Despite her insistence the party is providing a credible alternative to the Labour government, the latest polling from YouGov suggested voters are yet to be convinced by Mrs Badenoch: 12 per cent believe she is a prime minister in waiting, while 62 per cent do not.

A majority of Conservative members, 54 per cent, do however believe she is doing a good job as party leader, while 24 per cent say she has done a bad job, according to the survey of 2,136 British adults carried out between October 28 and 29.