Badenoch delivers speech on final day of Tory conference – UK politics live

The Conservatives are now singing the national anthem. (For the second time – they sang it on Sunday too.) In the hall, the shadow cabinet introductions are still going on. And this is what Labour said ahead of the speech. It’s from Bridget Phillipson, the Labour chair. Kemi Badenoch’s top team don’t even think her leadership is the “right way”. The Tory leader is living in an alternate reality. Tory conference has blown open splits over the triple lock, her shadow chancellor’s secret plan for billions of extra cuts to public services, and plots to rip up hard-won renters’ rights. The Conservative party hasn’t learned a single lesson since they were kicked out of office. Instead of finally apologising for Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget, Badenoch promoted its co-author as her shadow chancellor. Their credibility on the economy remains in tatters. Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has posted this on social media ahead of Badenoch’s speech. Badenoch has spent half her conference making unfunded promises, and half lecturing the country on fiscal responsibility. We’re all still paying the price for Conservative financial mismanagement. Liberal Democrats will act as the firewall stopping her handing No 10 to Farage. Members of the shadow cabinet are being introduced, and taking their seats, ahead of Kemi Badenoch giving her speech. Philp also used his speech to repeat the claims made by Nick Timothy about people being killed because the police or the authorities were worried about being seen as racist, and as a result did not properly deal with offenders. (See 10.59am.) He said: [The National Police Chiefs Counci’s anti-racism commitment is] designed to sound reasonable, but it expressly says that the police should treat different ethnic groups differently. To artificially engineer the same arrest rate, treat people differently based on the colour of their skin. That is literally racist. And this approach cost lives. Valdo Calocane was not sectioned after a violent attack when mental health professionals considered research claiming, I think wrongly, that too many black men are detained under the Mental Health Act. Calocane was so dangerous that he later killed three innocent people, Barnaby, Grace and Ian. Similarly, when Axel Rudakubana’s head teacher warned about the danger Rudakubana posed, a social worker said that was racial stereotyping and the risk assessment was watered down. Rudakubana went on to kill three innocent young girls. And when Henry Novak was murdered, the police were so keen to believe his killer’s false allegations of racism they handcuffed Henry as he lay dying and ignored his last words, ‘I can’t breathe’. I’ve met the parents of Barnaby, of Grace and of Henry. I can hardly begin to imagine their sense of betrayal when the system that was supposed to protect their children instead abandoned them. So this obsession with racial politics above public safety must end. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, is speaking now at the conference. He described Nick Timothy as the “Bob the Builder” of the next parliament on the basis of the Tory pledge to build 50,000 prison places. “Can he fix it? Yes he can,” Philp said. He went on: I know we didn’t get everything right in government, but we now have a plan to make things better, whereas Labour is making them worse. Dangerous men released early from jail. Police numbers down by 2,000. Stop and search opposed. 92% of crime unsolved. Illegal immigrants and foreign criminals not deported. Because Labour doesn’t believe in consequences for wrongdoers, and without consequences things get worse. Crime rising, shoplifting rife, migrant boats arriving daily, and we feel unsafe on our own high streets. Who pays the price? Not the criminals. It’s the decent, law-abiding majority. Labour has failed them. We will not. The next Conservative government will make sure crime actually has consequences. In his speech, Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, suggested that people were killed in Southport and Nottingham as a result of “Labour’s ideology” on diversity. He said: So many parts of government are corrupted by radical identity politics and a deference to clan culture. We can no longer trust our institutions to work for us all, to uphold the principle that justice is blind, that we’re all equal before the law. The faces may change, but the policies live on because this is Labour’s ideology. An ideology with serious consequences in the real world: the Southport killer, Axel Rudakubana, Henry Nowak’s killer, Vikram Digwa, the Nottingham killer Valdo Calocane. With each of their terrible crimes and many more like them, the failures of the state run deep. A desire to be representative and inclusive has warped and manipulated and led to failure, suffering and injustice. This is a cancer and the next Conservative government will root it out. Kevin Hollinrake, the Conservative chair, raised a pint of beer and was joined by his black female Labrador, Zuzu, on stage at the party’s conference in Birmingham, the Press Association reports. Hollinrake made light of comments by Labour MP Jenny Riddell-Carpenter who said country pubs with “warm beer” and a black Labrador was a “far-right nostalgic vision of Britain”, PA reports. Hollinrake had said his advice to party leader Kemi Badenoch was “just be yourself”. He added: Everywhere I go, people tell me how much they love Kemi, including in my local pub, that place where I go to drink my far-right fantasy pint. With my far-right fantasy black lab. Hollinrake then took a sip of beer and raised his glass as the dog joined him on stage. It got a standing ovation. (Riddell-Carpenter claimed her remarks were taken out of context.) At the Tory conference, Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, is speaking now. He is recalling the failings of the police over the Maccabi Tel Aviv fan ban, which he highlighted in parliament, and he claims this is symptomatic of wider failings with the police. He says: As I campaigned to expose the reality of what happened, more and more emerged about life in many of our towns and cities, about police leaders so compromised, so corrupted by the ideology of multiculturalism. They surrendered their operational independence to those they should have faced down, including many they should have locked up. That is something we should never, ever tolerate. And I promise you, under Kemi’s Conservatives, we never will. When Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, gave his conference speech two weeks ago, he was clearly making a pitch for the moderate Tories who either switched to his party two years ago, or who might cross over at the next election. Since 2024, on migration and Europe, Kemi Badenoch has been sounding increasingly like Nigel Farage. As a result, for one nation Conservatives, her party has been a turn-off. Now that is changing. The story of this conference is that – belatedly, but significantly – Badenoch is trying to win them back. That is best illustrated by looking at the headline policies either announced at this conference or in the run-up to it. They fall roughly into three categories. Policies for everyone These are proposals that don’t benefit a particular demographic, but which arguably are good for the nation as a wh0le. They are, however, almost all ideas that would appeal to people with distinct, rightwing views. 1) “Tough love” welfare proposals that would stop many young people claiming universal credit. 2) Building 50,000 new prison places (funded by slashing aid spending to £1bn a year, although you had to read the small print to find this out). 3) Tightening the rules for people wanting to get a sick note so they don’t have to work. 4) Excluding foreigners from the student loan system. 5) Spending £1bn a year on a “Britannia Shield” missile system. The welfare proposal seems to penalise young people, although the Tories would claim that ultimately they will benefit from a system that does not consign them to a life on benefits. In fiscal terms, it is hard to gauge to what extent the young would lose out because the Tories have not provided clear costings. Policies for the young Badenoch is sensitive to the claim that her party only favours wealthy, older voters, and there have been two announcements that do seem designed to appeal to younger people. 6) Cutting regulations relating to building, as part of a series of measures that the Tories claim could cut the cost of building a new house by £50,000. 7) A £2.3bn cut in employer national insurance for young people. Younger voters may be sceptical about whether these proposals will do a lot for inter-generational fairness. They are both announcements that primarily benefit businesses. Builders might sell homes more cheaply because red tape has been cut, but they might just pocket the gains. And it is employers who pay employer national insurance – although the move should help young people by boosting their employment prospects. Policies for older, wealthier people While the policies for younger people may seem relatively marginal, the Conservatives have announced two measures that will potentially have a huge impact on a smallish number of older, wealthy people. 8) Lifting the £100,000 earnings cap which means people on more than that amount do not qualify for free childcare. For some people, this will be worth as much as £20,000 per child. 9) Repealing the mansion tax. Andrew Griffith, the shadow chancellor, announced this in his speech on Monday. This is how the party explained it in a note it sent out later. The Family Homes Tax, which Labour call a High Value Council Tax Surcharge, was announced by Rachel Reeves in her 2025 budget, and is due to start in April 2028. It will add between £2,500 and £7,500 a year to the council tax bill of every home in England affected. Even the lowest band costs more than the average Band D council tax bill in England, which stands at £2,392 this year, so the surcharge alone will cost more than a typical family pays for all its council services. However, there have been recent reports that the threshold could be lowered even further … A Conservative government will abolish the Family Homes Tax outright, and if Labour legislates before the election a Conservative government will repeal it. The Family Homes Tax is an unfair tax raid on the homes people have worked hard for. It is a purely political and spiteful tax raid by Labour. The tax is expected to raise just £400 million a year compared to the over £50 billion a year raised by the council tax system. It adds huge complexity for very little gain in terms of overall revenue. Interestingly, asked about the pensions triple lock yesterday, Badenoch said it would be difficult to reverse Labour legislation on this if it becomes law because that money would be spent elsewhere. But she is not applying that logic here. 10) A cut in inheritance tax? If that does happen in the speech later, that will clearly be a third, significant bung to older, wealthy people. Conclusion You don’t need to be John Curtice to see what is going on here. The Financial Times columnist Stephen Bush posted these on Bluesky earlier this week. It’s true that not a lot of people are hit by the £100k childcare thing, but the thing is, all of the people who are live in about 100 seats, 40 of which the Tories need to win from the Liberal Democrats, 20 of them they have to prevent the Liberal Democrats winning next time. (The other 40 are Labour held seats where a lot of socially liberal high earners are locked in a loveless marriage with Labour to try and stop the Greens winning the seat.) And he was backed up by the politics professor Rob Ford. Seems the Tories have finally looked at an electoral map This is stupid it only benefits rich couples with children” (Points at map) - look at the blue bits. What do they have in common? Yes Cons do best with pensioners who have paid off their mortgages but next group to target after that is high income families who feel, not without reason, that they are taxed more heavily than ever. They have noticed and aren’t happy about it. That’s a political opportunity! In an interview yesterday, ITV’s Robert Peston put it to Badenoch that she was obviously trying to win back older voters in the south of England who are leaning towards the Lib Dems or Labour. Badenoch replied: “Robert, I’m very sad, very sad, that you’re looking at this in crude electoral terms.” Viewers will have taken that as proof he was right. Kemi Badenoch claims that the Conservative party has changed considerably under her leadership, and that as a result it does not deserve to be tainted by the terrible reputation of the last Conservative government. In one of her interviews yesterday, she said: We are under new management. Your viewers will know that sometimes you have a football team that’s disappointing. There’s a new captain, there’s a new coach, there’s a new owner, effectively, which is all me. In some respects, this is true. The Conservatives are now committed to leaving the European convention on human rights, a treaty backed by every previous Tory leader ever since it was drawn up in the 1950s. On net zero and migration, the party has also shifted sharply to the right. In other respects, the party has not changed that much at all. Badenoch is presenting herself as a modern Margaret Thatcher, but the “battle of ideas” extract from her speech released overnight (see 8am) is mainstream Conservatism. According to a YouGov poll published yesterday, voters are more likely to think that the Conservative party has not changed under Badenoch (46%) than it has (30%). As Andrew McDonald and Megan McElroy point out in their London Playbook briefing, there are broadly two options if Kemi Badenoch wants to cut inheritance tax without getting rid of it completely. They report: There were persistent rumors and some reporting before this conference that the Tories were looking to scrap that tax altogether. But since then, Badenoch’s team has been making more cautious noises. Right-leaning papers including the Telegraph, Times and Sun all report this morning that Badenoch will cut IHT, but not scrap it. That would sit well with the broad theme of the speech on the state of the public finances, given inheritance tax is expected to raise more than £10 billion a year from next year onwards. To put it another way: scrapping IHT would effectively cost the same as building a “Britannia Shield” every year. Instead: The Times’ Oliver Wright and co. reckon Badenoch will announce a cut to the 40% inheritance tax rate, which only applies to an estate’s value over £325,000 (or £500,000 if a home is given to a direct descendant). If that is what Badenoch opts for … it’s still an expensive tax cut. Estimates from 2023, the last time the Tories were looking at this, reckoned a 10 percentage point cut to 30% would cost a few billion a year. The other rumor doing the rounds is that she could change the thresholds at which IHT kicks in. Inheritance tax (IHT) s one of the most curious taxes in the Treasury’s armoury. It is one of the most unpopular of all taxes levied by HM Revenue and Customs, with polling showing strong support for getting rid of it entirely, even though most people never pay it. The explanation for this paradox is partly the visceral belief, widely shared, that parents should be able to pass on their assets to their children. (Another factor is that inheritance tax is also very unpopular with the sort of rich people who own newspapers, even though Kemi Badenoch claims they never have to pay.) Speaking about IHT on the Today prograamme this morning, Helen Miller, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, said: It’s a tax that is charged on estates when people die, but only around one in 20 estates will actually end up paying it. The threshold for inheritance tax is £325,000, which means it is not charged on any estates worth less than that. If a home is being given away to children, the threshold rises to £500,000, and for couples the threshold rises to £1m. “So most people don’t go anywhere near the tax,” Miller said. There are more details of how the tax works here. And here is a Commons library briefing on IHT including this chart showing how many people pay it. Good morning. Kemi Badenoch is expected to announce cuts to inheritance tax (IHT) this morning in a keynote conference speech that will claim the next election will be a “battle of ideas” between a government spending ever more money, and a Conservative party determined to make the state live within its means. The Tories have not confirmed that inheritance tax cuts will be proposed. Equally, they have done nothing at all to quash speculation that Badenoch will make an announcement along these lines, to the point where it is now hard to see how she can deliver a speech that does not mention IHT without causing huge disappointment to her supporters. IHT is set to raise £15bn a year for the Treasury by the end of the decade, and Badenoch is expected to propose cutting it rather than getting rid of it completely. While any tax announcement is likely to dominate the headline, the Tories are also set to publish a “savings plan” today that will explain where they will find the money for tax cuts, including for the £2.3bn cut to employer national insurance for young people announced by the party last night. At their conference last year, the Conservatives said they had identified cuts to government spending worth £47bn, with £23bn coming from welfare. Yesterday Helen Whately, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said she had found “billions more” in cuts, in addition to those on the table last year. The Conservatives have released some extracts from Badenoch’s speech in advance, and she will focus on an assertion that there is now a firm dividing line between Labour and the Tories on public spending. She will say: There is a fight coming in British politics. A fight that we have not seen in this country for more than half a century. It will be a battle for the soul of this nation. A battle of ideas. A battle that goes to the very core of who we are and what kind of country we want to be. On one side we have a government that wants to wind back the clock to failed ideas of the past. They believe economic growth is created by politicians. They think government knows best. They think that your income, your pension and your savings are theirs to take and then hand out as they see fit. They claim that what they are doing is compassionate but we know that these ideas will make every single person in this country poorer. Your taxes will be higher. Your bills will go up. You will find it harder and harder to make ends meet. Just because these ideas are delivered on TikTok doesn’t make them any less dangerous than they have always been. On the other side of the battle is us. A renewed Conservative party fighting again for the belief that what people earn belongs to them, not government. That the collective wisdom of people in our country is greater than the central planning of bureaucrats and politicians. That spending money we don’t have on things we can’t afford is not kind, it is reckless. Here is the agenda for the day. 10am: Kevin Hollinrake, the Tory chair, opens the session. There are also speeches from Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, and Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary. Around 11.15am: Kemi Badenoch delivers her keynote speech. I’m afraid we are no longer able to have comments open below the line every day on this blog. If you want to contact me, please email politics.live@theguardian.com. You can use this email to flag up corrections, comments for publication, questions or complaints.