CONSERVATIVE frontrunner Kemi Badenoch campaigned to increase legal migration, a bombshell video reveals.
The top Tory boasted she had helped to open the floodgates for student arrivals and pushed for "removing the annual limits on work visas” in a 2018 Commons speech.
The then rising star hailed the move that later led to record rates of net migration - but now talks tough on borders.
The shadow Housing Secretary is the favourite to succeed Rishi Sunak as Tory boss following the party’s election disaster.
But last night critics said her gushing support for relaxing immigration rules were a hammer blow to her hopes of winning the contest that is due to conclude in the autumn.
Reform leader Nigel Farage said: “If Kemi becomes leader Reform will boom.”
A Tory source added: “Either she misled the Commons in 2018 or Kemi is misleading the public now with any claim she would reduce migration numbers.”
In the Commons intervention she “welcomed” the scrapping of the cap on visas for skilled workers and students, claiming: “I lobbied for both on behalf of the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Anglia Ruskin university, which serve my constituency.”
Last night Ms Badenoch refused to comment.
However she issued a statement from a former Tory MP Rachel MacLean - who lost her seat in July’s Tory drubbing.
It said: “It is shameful that this 2018 clip is being used to attack Kemi - the leadership candidate who has never been in the Home Office and responsible for controlling our borders.
“Every Conservative MP stood in 2019 on a platform of a points-based system, exactly what Kemi is advocating.
“As leader, Kemi will ensure that when we say we’ll bring the numbers down, we will.”
It comes as fellow candidate Tom Tugendhat prepared to slam the cops and PM Keir Starmer over their handling of recent riots.
The fellow Tory hopeful will use a speech today (TUES) to plea for an “end to the inconsistent application of the law”.
He will add: “The intrusion of politics – the politics of protest, the politics of self-appointed ‘community leaders’ – into policing must end."
