'I have no regrets!' Kemi Badenoch lashes out at 'virtuous lefties' after Rachel Reeves Budget grilling

She added: “Let me explain to the Chancellor, woman to woman: people out there aren’t complaining because she’s female, they’re complaining because she is utterly incompetent.”

Speaking to GB News this morning, the Leader of the Opposition revealed she has no regrets about her choice of language or tone.

"I was speaking for a lot of people out there who were tearing their hair out at the way that Rachel Reeves is punishing them," Mrs Badenoch said.

"You go to any pub, you see what they're dealing with, speak to any farmer, any small business - they are suffering.

"There was nothing in this Budget for them. This was a Budget for benefits."

When asked why her Budget grilling prompted such fury, Mrs Badenoch added: "I think because a lot of people on the left think that they are virtuous and holier than thou, and they don't deserve any criticism; that it's the people on the right who are the bad people. And I've got no truck with that.

"And I wasn't going to pull my punches. It was the first time I had a chance to respond to a Budget, and I wanted to make sure that I was heard, and I was very clear.

"It's sometimes, you know, with these economic statements, it can get very dry and technical and people don't actually understand what's gone wrong.

"I wanted the public to know that I know what's gone wrong, and I'm speaking for that."

Mrs Badenoch, who is calling for Ms Reeves to resign after allegedly misleading MPs and the public about the extent of Britain's financial black hole, was also quizzed on whether Sir Keir Starmer should quit as Prime Minister.

She said: "Well, let's see what happens with the Financial Conduct Authority.

"I believe that Rachel Reeves gave misleading statements.

"If a CEO had done the same thing to try and massage figures, they would have been sacked by now. So let's see what the FCA says.

"But it's quite clear that the Prime Minister approved of what she did. He gave this extraordinary press conference today where he said he was proud of the Budget.

"This is a man — this is a man who cannot admit when things have gone wrong. He's weak and in hock to his backbenchers.

"It's a panicky thing to do the Monday after budget. So I don't think that he feels very strong in his position right now."

However, Mrs Badenoch also came under pressure for the Tory Party's failure to deliver on its promises to the British people, especially with net migration soaring to 906,000, tax bills hitting their highest level since the 1950s and a record-breaking 7.7 million being kept on NHS waiting lists.

Admitting mistakes had been made during the Conservative Party's 14-year stint in power, the Leader of the Opposition said: "I've acknowledged and apologised for mistakes that were made on migration and on high taxes.

"If we hadn't done those, we'd probably still be in Government right now.

"But I don't have a time machine to go back and fix what previous Governments did. All I can do is look at the future and fix the future.

"I'm changing the Conservative Party, making sure that it is one that stands for fiscal and personal responsibility — living within our means.

"We've seen people who don't like that, who just want more welfare giveaways, more spending, leave our party. We have to be a real Conservative Party. The honest party, the party that tells the truth. That's what I'm trying to do."

However, Ms Reeves has denied misleading MPs after Treasury officials had initially briefed there was a black hole of between £22billion and £40billion."

The Chancellor told the BBC: “I do not accept that at all. The OBR numbers themselves, which I agree with and we knew they were going to be published, they are very clear that there was less fiscal space than there was just a few months ago in the spring. And we needed not less but more fiscal headroom.”

Speaking to GB News yesterday, Treasury Minister James Murray also rejected claims that the Chancellor had lied to the public about the state of Britain's finances.

"The OBR set out clearly that there had been a productivity downgrade of £16billion," Mr Murray told The Camilla Tominey Show.

"And going into the Budget process, we also knew we wanted to get headroom up, and that headroom is critical to helping to get the cost of government borrowing and to getting mortgages down."

However, Ms Reeves was informed by the OBR on October 31 that there was no deficit in the public finances, with tax receipts creating a surplus of £4.2billion before policy measures had been taken into account

The Chancellor went on to use a keynote pre-Budget press conference to hint at breaking Labour's manifesto commitment not to raise taxes due to concerns about the UK's finances on November 4.

Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride has raised the matter with the Financial Conduct Authority, with Reform UK leader also reporting Ms Reeves to the Prime Minister's independent ethics adviser.

While pressure mounts on the Office for Budget Responsibility to explain how key details of the Budget were accidentally published in advance of the Chancellor's speech last week, Mrs Badenoch shut down calls to abolish the fiscal watchdog.

The Leader of the Opposition said: "I don't think this is really the OBR that has created this problem. This is the Chancellor.

"She's the one who doesn't have a grip. She made all sorts of promises — promises, promises not to tax working people, promises not to come back for more, not to freeze thresholds — and she's broken all of them.

"She doesn't know how to grow the economy, so she's retreated into her comfort zone of giving people more benefits."