Conservative Party Conference

And already there are the customary Conservative Party rumours of leadership plots and ousters - most of which, currently, swirl around Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick. And so, Kemi needed to pull something out of the bag - across conference week and in today’s speech.

What she delivered was a sort of plea for seriousness. For seriousness on business and growth, on opportunity and education, on borders and integration. She spoke of the degradation of the public realm and of public services and of the global race to give our children a better, more prosperous life than that endured or enjoyed by their parents and grandparents. It went down well in the hall - like Keir Starmer last week, expectations were low, and she cleared them.

But… but… At one point Badenoch railed that ‘we know what drift looks like!’. The loyal hall applauded, of course, and she meant to chide the current Government, of course. But for the average punter who may have accidentally stumbled across the speech at home - between shifts whilst working two jobs, say, or while trying desperately to get a doctor’s appointment for their kid, or perhaps because they’re always at home during the day, now, because they’ve been signed off sick for more than a year - does ‘we know what drift looks like’ sound like an accusation or a confession? Because drift - and its consequences - is exactly what much of the electorate still associate with her party and with the governments of which she was a senior member.

Can she and her party break out of the straight-jacket of its own recent history? Her case for the prosecution of Labour and Reform is strong enough. On the one hand even the reddest of the red don’t claim that everything is going to plan. And in the teal corner there… well, there isn’t really a plan. But politics is rarely merely about the critique. It’s also about the credibility of the alternative. And therein lies the structural, foundational problem for the Conservative Party. It is still too soon. People’s memories aren’t that short. The faces (presumably to the reassurance of Robert Jenrick, at least) are all too familiar.

Kemi Badenoch today outlined a ‘blueprint for Britain’, rooted in ‘conservative values’ that was a ‘plan, not a slogan’. All opposition parties claim that they are going to create a ‘new settlement’ that will fix the country’s ills - that’s their job, really. But most opposition parties aren’t also the people who, just over a year ago, started the fires they’re now promising to extinguish.

Which is why Kemi’s original instinct - that the country needed more time before it heard bold plans from her or her frontbench - may well have been right. Sadly for her, the Conservative Party lacks Aesop’s confidence in the power of patience. She has been successfully bounced into outlining a platform, thereby limiting her space for a relaunch or a reset after the local and national elections in May. If her party comes third or fourth (as it may!), she will not be able to claim that it is because it has not yet laid out its plans for the future or offered a prospectus to the British people.

Badenoch has been coaxed into building the very trap her internal rivals wish to catch her in - Kemi the goose now has to hope that Jenrick the fox will be somehow undone before supper time comes.

New Policies announced at Conservative Party Conference

Crime & Justice

• Hire 10,000 more police officers.
• Triple the rate of stop & search among the police.
• Increase police presence and live facial recognition technologies in 2,000 violent crime hotspots.
• Scrap non-crime Hate Incidents.

Economy

• Implement an economic ‘golden rule’ to ensure half of all savings made by a future Conservative government would be put towards reducing the deficit.

• Cut State spending by £47bn. Initiatives to do this include:
  • Welfare spending reduced by £23bn.
  • Reduce the civil service by 132,000 people, saving £8bn.
  • Restrict social housing to British nationals, saving £3.9bn.
  • End asylum hotels with a new ‘BORDERS Plan’, saving £3.5bn.
  • Scrap “most of” GB Energy, saving £1.6bn.
  • Cut overseas aid by £7bn.
• A new ‘First Jobs Bonus’ - a £5,000 tax cut for every young person starting work.
• Scrap stamp duty.
• A permanent 100% rate relief for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses who pay £110k a year or less in business rates currently.
• Scrap changes to the Agricultural Property Relief announced at the 2024 Autumn Budget.
• Commitment to the triple lock on pensions.

Education

• A ban on children excluded from two schools accessing mainstream education.
• A legal 'presumption' that pupils who bring knives to school or assault their classmates or staff be permanently excluded.
• Scrap VAT rates leveraged on private schools.
• Caps on the number of courses offered by universities that lead to “consistently poor student outcomes” and use the money gained to double the apprenticeship budget.

Energy & Environment

• Scrap the existing carbon pricing system by rolling back the UK’s Emissions Trading System and axing the Carbon Price Support Mechanism.
• Cut renewable energy subsidies by ending a regime of 20-year green energy certificates and scrapping the wind and solar levy.
• Repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act removing the need to meet five-year carbon budgets and replace it with a “new strategy”.
• Continue support for the domestic oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.
• Disband the Climate Change Committee - the watchdog that advises on how policies affect the UK’s carbon footprint.

Immigration

• Ban asylum claims for illegal entrants.
• Leave the European Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Action against Trafficking.
• Repeal the Human Rights Act.
• Deport all new illegal arrivals within a week and all foreign criminals.
• End the Immigration Tribunal, Judicial Review and all legal aid for immigration cases.
• Ensure returns agreements are backed by visa sanctions.
• Abolish the Sentencing Council.
• Support allies abroad to prevent illegal entry to Europe.
• Introduce an ‘ICE-style’ Removals Force to deport 150,000 illegal immigrants a year.
• A new ‘BORDERS Plan’ to require officials to remove 750,000 illegal immigrants within five years.
• Commitment to sack any judge with links to open borders campaigns.

Health & Social Care

• A ban on doctors going on strike.