KEMI: I'LL SAVE HIGH STREETS AND KICKSTART BRITAIN

KEMI Badenoch today makes a passionate promise to save Britain's high streets, which she says Labour are intent on killing.

- MARTYN BROWN and TONY WHITFIELD

The Conservative leader insists she can reverse the decline of the nation's town centres and kickstart a jobs boom.

Writing exclusively in the Sunday Express, Mrs Badenoch, right, vows to end the scourge of boarded-up shops which she blames on Labour's punishing Jobs Tax and sky-high business rates.

In a blazing attack, she accuses Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves of treating high streets like "cash cows" so they can fund their own "pet projects" and allow the benefits bill to soar, adding: "Ever since Labour took office, it's as if they've been hellbent on making life harder for high streets." Recalling her first jobs as a teenager, in McDonald's and clothing retailer New Look, she warns: "If we lose high street businesses, we don't just lose a part of our community and local economy.

"We lose a first start in life for thousands of people." Abolishing business rates for 250,000 traders is the centrepiece of Mrs Badenoch's bold blueprint to revive high streets.

It also includes slashing energy costs, cutting red tape to help shops flourish and increasing police numbers.She insists the four-pronged plan, to be introduced if the Tories win the next election, will help revive town centres which have taken a battering in recent years as shoppers turn to online retailers.

Mrs Badenoch's stark warning comes as Labour gears up for another humiliating U-turn, with ministers tipped to announce a climbdown on tax hikes for pubs.