Badenoch says she may need a softer approach

Conservative leadership contender Kemi Badenoch has said she will tone down her approach – after some of her colleagues suggested she can be rude.

Badenoch is widely seen as the favourite to replace Rishi Sunak as Tory leader when the results of the party membership vote are revealed on Saturday.

Earlier this month she was branded "disrespectful" by her rival Robert Jenrick for failing to set our her leadership policies more clearly.

Quizzed on a perception that she can seen as abrasive, Badenoch agreed she may need to take a more softly-softly approach.

"I think this is one of the manifestations that I don't think I'm being rude," she told the BBC’s Newscast podcast, as she put her demeanour down to “having a higher threshold for stress".

"I just think I'm saying something that I wouldn't mind hearing back, so I treat people how I treat myself and, you know, I've had even some of my advisors saying, why did you say that?

"I have to be mindful that I have a higher tolerance for things than others, and I think part of being a leader is being able to calibrate so that you can help manage other people.”

Asked if she would adopt a more softly-softly approach from now on, she said "yes, but that's fine", adding "I'm not perfect, you know, I've never said that I was perfect".

She continued: "We keep wanting people who will give the perfect interview and have the perfect policies look perfect.

"There's nobody like that. Everybody's coming with pluses and minuses."

Badenoch, who has done very few interviews with journalists compared to her rival Jenrick, also suggested there was a low turnout of Tory members voting for their new party leader.

"I'm doing more media this week specifically because people aren’t turning out to vote as much as we would have expected," she said.

Chatting to Conservative members at events, Badenoch said, she would ask whether people had voted and be told "well, no, they haven't. We're going to wait till the last minute."

But the former business secretary said she wasn’t worried Tory party members weren’t voting for her and claimed to be "sanguine" about the results.

"I don't know if I will win," she said.

"The bookies have me ahead, but I think it's actually neck and neck.

"Robert could win. Anyone could win. Either of us could win."

Perhaps party members didn’t like the choice they were presented with, Badenoch was asked.

She responded: "Well, there's nothing I can do about that. That's politics."

The full interview will be available at 6am on Tuesday on BBC Sounds.