Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch promised to abolish inheritance tax on UK family homes, while also claiming Britain is heading for a “battle for the soul of the nation” with a Labour government she painted as fiscally profligate.
“We are running out of money,” she said, promising to focus on economic growth during her Tory conference speech at the International Convention Centre (ICC) in Birmingham.
Badenoch promised to restore her party’s trusted values on the economy and defence.
“It’s like the old days,” said one visibly delighted delegate to a volunteer usher, as party members filled the ICC’s Symphony Hall before Badenoch’s big speech. She was over-egging it. A YouGov poll has the Tories still seven points behind an accelerating Labour.
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Still, there was an apparent outbreak of optimism among the party’s faithful, two years after its historic battering in 2024’s election. Ever since her barnstorming conference speech in Manchester a year ago, Badenoch’s Tories have found their feet.
“This party has two modes, panic and complacency. They’re not panicking,” said one seasoned observer, on his 11th Tory conference. “They say the mood is up, but that’s because they’re not at work and drinking here all day. Why wouldn’t the mood be up?”
Before Tories could find their way back from historic defeat, first the party’s delegates had to find the entrance into the Birmingham city centre venue.
This year’s “CPC 26” Conservative Party Conference emblem included an arrow pointing up and, naturally, to the right. This arrow emblem was on fences all around the venue’s meandering perimeter. Scores of confused delegates trying to find their way inside appeared to take the arrows literally, blindly following them down side streets.
Badenoch spent much of the conference pushing back against suggestions that, despite the sense of optimism, the numbers at the event were down.
“Conference is buzzing,” she insisted.
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Broadcaster Jeremy Clarkson was hauled in on Monday to add stardust. Even he couldn’t resist remarking upon the visibly thin crowds. As he surveyed the hall from the stage, he quipped that some Tory delegates had come “dressed as empty seats”.
The party did not say how many were in attendance, but it was a fraction of the estimated 20,000 in Liverpool last week for the Labour conference.
There also seemed to be a decline in the number of business lobbyists attending compared to some previous years, a judgment on the Tories’ proximity to power.
No British political party conference is complete without hot-button cultural references among the exhibits. The Tories delighted in hitting a double.
Britain is currently enraptured with the Bayeux Tapestry on display in London, the first time the historical masterpiece has been in the country for almost 1,000 years. Separately, Westminster is also obsessed with AI.
Conference Tories lined up to view the “Birmingham Tapestry”, a full-sized 88 metre mock-up of the real thing, created using AI.
Instead of depicting Norman battles on horseback, it showed the first two years of UK politics under a Labour government, complete with a crying former chancellor Rachel Reeves. It also included scenes of Nicola Sturgeon unable to see her husband’s fraudulently paid-for motorhome, and Reform UK’s Nigel Farage arguing with a bin.
Over the past decade, Brexit has been a big issue at Tory conferences. This year, party members and Tory MPs seemed unsure how to react to Labour prime minister Andy Burnham’s recent attempt to reopen debate on rejoining the European Union.
One way to get Tories interested in Europe is to – literally – feed them. The EU delegation laid on a lavish spread on Tuesday afternoon, which drew a crush of Tories to hear shadow foreign secretary Tom Tugenhadt speak.
He vaguely referenced Brexit by urging Britain and the EU not to focus on reviving “the structures of the past”. Then, when mentioning Britain’s modern ties with India, he seemed to barely stop himself referring to it as a former colony.
[ Is Brexit back on the agenda for Britain?Opens in new window ]
One EU official watching Tugendhat speak told The Irish Times he was more worried about the party’s calls, led by Badenoch, for it to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) so it could tighten up migration law.
Every mention by Badenoch of leaving the ECHR was loudly cheered in the main hall. Perhaps leaving the convention, which would have profound effects on Britain’s relationships with other countries, including Ireland, is the British right’s new Brexit.
Robert Jenrick, the former Tory front bencher who defected to become a senior member of Reform, was the conference’s pantomime villain. The crowd roared when Badenoch humorously hinted at his apparent treachery by alluding to a Tory “export boom” to its rivals – including Jenrick and also Suella Braverman.
The irony is that the Tory crowd in previous years cheered almost every public utterance by Jenrick and Braverman when they were senior Tory members seen as then-better representing grassroots views than the party leadership.
In her speech, Badenoch reiterated a promise from earlier in the conference to spend £10 billion (€11.8 billion) on a “Britannia Shield” missile defence system. She also rebuffed calls from some party’s supporters to “unite the right” by teaming up with Reform to defeat Labour.
Listing some of Reform’s supposed failings around financial probity and, she suggested, its problematic attitude to race, Badenoch said: “I’m not uniting with that.”
