Kemi Badenoch has praised X and Tesla owner Elon Musk in a speech pledging to shrink the size of the UK Government if she gets into power.
Speaking at a US think tank, Ms Badenoch warned that the steady growth of state power over people’s lives is curtailing freedoms and reducing their ability to “think for themselves”.
She explained: “This is why I am excited about DOGE and what President-Elect Trump and Elon Musk will do on government efficiency.”
President Trump appointed Mr Musk to head up a new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE), which will set about cutting regulations, civil servants and government spending.
President Trump said it will be “‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time”, a reference to the top-secret WW2 programme to develop nuclear weapons.
Elon Musk said he will serve as an “outside volunteer” to the President, rather than an official government employee.
Ms Badenoch argued that the West has “forgotten what the state’s purpose is in national life, no longer asking, what it should or should not do”.
“Instead using state power to continue tinkering with every aspect of life in order to achieve social justice, we sleepwalk into a planned economy far more oppressive and stagnant than thinkers of the twentieth century could have envisaged.”
She said: “The best governments do a few things well, not many things badly.”
“The unnecessary growth of the state beyond providing essential public services has created multiple opportunities for activists to spread their ideology.
“We need to make the case for leaner government.
“And yet, too much rhetoric speaks of a smaller state as an end in itself. A smaller state is a means to secure a better way of doing things, allowing bureaucracy to focus and prioritise its resources.”
She said that it is up to politicians like her “to provide hope” that an alternative way of doing things is possible.
However she warned: “There is no cavalry coming. It’s just us.”
“We have a job to do in championing and defending the values that don’t just help us win elections, but make the world a better place.”