New Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says the partygate scandal was 'overblown'

The former business secretary became the first black woman to lead a major European political party on Saturday, when she defeated Robert Jenrick by 53,806 votes to 41,388.

In her first media appearance since that victory on the BBC yesterday, Ms Badenoch was challenged over what went wrong under her predecessors after promising to be “honest” about where the Conservatives had made mistakes.

Although she largely declined to be drawn into a “post-mortem” of the previous government, she said there had been “serious issues” under Boris Johnson’s premiership, but suggested the Partygate scandal was not one of them.

The scandal saw Mr Johnson fined for attending a party in Downing Street, one of several that took place under his tenure in breach of Covid lockdown regulations.

Ms Badenoch was a junior minister at the time the scandal came to light and remained in government, ultimately resigning over the Chris Pincher scandal that brought down Mr Johnson.

Asked about what had gone wrong with Mr Johnson’s government, she told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “I thought he was a great prime minister, but there were some serious issues that were not being resolved and I think that during that tenure the public thought that we were not speaking for them or looking out for them, we were in it for ourselves.

“Some of those things I think were perception issues, a lot of the stuff that happened around Partygate was not why I resigned.

“I thought that it was overblown. We should not have created fixed penalty notices, for example. That was us not going with our principles.”

Although Mr Johnson did not contest the fine, he has since insisted that he does not believe he did anything wrong.

Adding that the public was “not wrong to be upset about Partygate”, Ms Badenoch said: “The problem was that we should not have criminalised every day activities the way that we did.

“People going out for walks, all of them having fixed penalty notices, that was what ended up creating a trap for Boris Johnson.”

Leaving the house for exercise, including walks, was explicitly permitted under lockdown regulations, although Derbyshire Police was forced to apologise to two women it had fined for driving five miles to go for a walk. Their fines were also cancelled.

Labour Party chair Ellie Reeves criticised Ms Badenoch’s comments, saying: “Listening to Kemi Badenoch dismiss Partygate as ‘overblown’ will add insult to injury for families across Britain who followed the rules, missing loved ones’ deaths and family funerals, whilst her colleagues partied in Downing Street.”

Ms Badenoch is expected to start naming her Shadow Cabinet today and tomorrow.

The new Tory leader is understood to want her top team in place by Tuesday, when the shadow cabinet is scheduled to meet for the first time since her election.

During the campaign, she suggested she would be open to offering roles to all five of her leadership rivals, although former home secretary James Cleverly has already announced his intention to return to the backbenches.

But Mr Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat, Mel Stride and Dame Priti Patel appear to still be open to offers of frontbench jobs.

Among Ms Badenoch’s public backers, former Treasury minister Andrew Griffith has been widely tipped as a possible shadow chancellor.