Kemi Badenoch has been criticised for denying Britain is “broken”, as Lizzie Cundy declared the state of the country under Labour a “travesty”.

Speaking to GB News following the Conservative leader’s interview, the commentator hit back at Mrs Badenoch and said

Speaking to GB News following Robert Jenrick’s defection to Reform, Mrs Badenoch said: “Politics is broken, Government is broken. There are a lot of things that are broken, they can’t be fixed, but the country, the country is not broken.

“And I don’t want us to terrify young people who are leaving the country. We are telling them that it’s broken and they’re saying, fine, we’ll leave. Let’s give them some hope.”

Hitting back at Mrs Badenoch, Ms Cundy said: “It was like a scene from Macbeth! The skullduggery, the disloyalty, and going to another party. I couldn’t quite believe it, I was gripped. What political theatre it really was.

“But I’m afraid this country is broken. I love this country, but I don’t agree with Kemi.”

She said: “Either she’s naive or not reading the room, or maybe she doesn’t want to admit it because she and her party were part of the problem. We’ve got 41,427 people in small boats that have come over.We’ve got a Government that has done 13 U-turns.

“We have an NHS which is in a shambolic state. My friend went there yesterday thinking she had was having a stroke and waited 16 hours, it’s not acceptable. The high cost of living, we’ve got the high energy bills, 500 pubs have closed.

“This year 500 pubs closed, and it’s looking like 500 more this year. There’s two a day at the minute, closing up. It’s a travesty. We’ve got them releasing prisoners that shouldn’t be released. What is going on in this country?”

Agreeing with Ms Cundy, political commentator James Schneider argued that not only is Britain “broken”, but it is being “stolen”.

He told GB News: “I think it is broken. And I think it’s not just that it’s been broken, it’s being stolen.

“Look at our wages. Wages used to rise year on year in real terms, since about 2005, that hasn’t been happening at all. The economy has grown, wealth is going somewhere, it just isn’t going to workers.”

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He continued: “We’ve had our privatised utilities, water, rail, mail, that has paid out over £200billion in dividends to shareholders, not good for us. Sewage is being pumped into our our waters, that’s theft. That’s money that’s been taken out of our system.

“But look at the cost of housing. 25 years ago it was five years worth of money that would buy a home, now it’s like ten times. The average rent in London is now well over £2,000 a month. The height of our children is decreasing, which has been statistically linked to austerity policies by the last Government.

“And while all of this has happened, the 50 richest families in the country have more wealth than the bottom 34 million of us. So there is plenty of money in our society which could be used to fix many of the problems that Lizzie identified, but the wealth of our country is being sucked away from ordinary people, from the vast majority of people who have to go out and work, to a small class of people who own most things, and their assets are becoming worth more.”

Criticising Sir Keir Starmer, Ms Cundy claimed Britons have “lost confidence” in the Prime Minister: “The Labour Party have lost their confidence in Keir Starmer and his cabinet have, and I’m afraid the people of this good country have.

“He’s done so many U-turns, there isn’t any more road to U-turn on. I mean, seriously, honestly, it’s a joke, it really is. The man has to go.”

Mr Schneider told GB News: “Keir Starmer has been going back on his words for the entirety of his leadership.

“He won the leadership of the Labour Party on a kind of progressive perspective, saying he was going to do broadly speaking, left wing progressive things.

“And then he went completely the other way. The winter fuel was the one I do think at least with winter fuel, they got really wrong and then they stopped doing it.”