Badenoch says Britain ‘stagnating, while world around us moves on’
Badenoch says:
We are the only party that has the vision, the courage and the competence to tear up a broken political model, deliver a new blueprint for our country, and together take Britain into an era of prosperity and security.
She says opportunity was there for the people born into the country she was born into. (She was born in London in 1980.)
But now things are different, she says.
Britain is stagnating while the world around us moves on.
We are competing with restless and ambitious countries around the world.
We are competing with a billion people in India striving to become middle class.
We are competing with economic success stories like Poland.
Fifteen years ago, Polish workers came here to find opportunity. Now, Poland is growing twice as fast as we are.
While Britain was redefining what a woman is, China was building five nuclear reactors.
Key events
Badenoch claims Labour ‘deliberately collapsed’ spy trial because it wants to ‘suck up to Beijing’
Badenoch turns to the collapse of the Chinese spying trial.
Today we learn that Labour deliberately collapsed the trial of two men accused of spying on MPs for China because the prime minister wants to suck up to Beijing. This is squalid.
Badenoch is now attacking Labour.
What have labour given us? An anti-corruption minister under investigation for corruption, a homelessness minister who made her own tenants homeless, a housing secretary sacked for dodging housing taxes. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
We had a transport secretary fired for stealing a phone, and our ambassador in Washington thrown out in disgrace.
There is an old joke that a diplomat is someone sent abroad to lie for their country. Well, at least in Peter Mandelson, they had a man of experience.
She says Starmer is “utterly useless” and “weak”.
People don’t know what Keir Starmer stands for. And Starmer does not know himself.
Badenoch says the Tories have been “bold enough to do what is needed”.
And she cites Brexit as an example.
And, of course, we were brave enough to take Britain out of the European Union, honouring the biggest democratic mandate in our history.
Badenoch says Labour claims the 14 years of the last government were all bad. But that is wrong, she says.
Between 2010 and 2020 we slashed the deficit, we lifted millions of people out of tax and got millions into work.
We sent English schools soaring up the international league tables.
We led the coalition against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine .
But the party did not always fight hard enough for what it believed in, she says.
We need to remember who we are fighting for. We are fighting for people who work hard and do the right thing.
We are fighting for people who ask, why do sickness benefits pay more than the minimum wage?
We are fighting for small business owners, people who take risks and get things done.
We are fighting for the victims of crime. They want to know that we are on their side, that criminals will face the full force of the law.
We are fighting for the farmers putting food on our tables.
These are our people conference. They are the backbone of our country. We fought for them before, and we will fight for them again.
Badenoch says immigration making public services worse
Badenoch says immigration is making public services worse.
We are accepting hundreds of thouands of people, some with many dependents, some with no skills at all.
This broken immigration model is heaping pressure on our public sector, a public sector which already, every year, demands more and more and more of our money, yet services don’t get better, they get worse.
Everyone in this room knows what I’m talking about. We have all felt it.
We used to ring up our GP and get an appointment the same day. Now, now we have to wait on the phone to see if we’re one of the lucky ones.
We have potholes that have been around for so long, people are holding birthday parties for them.
Badenoch says Britain ‘stagnating, while world around us moves on’
Badenoch says:
We are the only party that has the vision, the courage and the competence to tear up a broken political model, deliver a new blueprint for our country, and together take Britain into an era of prosperity and security.
She says opportunity was there for the people born into the country she was born into. (She was born in London in 1980.)
But now things are different, she says.
Britain is stagnating while the world around us moves on.
We are competing with restless and ambitious countries around the world.
We are competing with a billion people in India striving to become middle class.
We are competing with economic success stories like Poland.
Fifteen years ago, Polish workers came here to find opportunity. Now, Poland is growing twice as fast as we are.
While Britain was redefining what a woman is, China was building five nuclear reactors.
Badenoch says the Tory party is her family – literally.
She married the deputy chair of her local association.
She thanks her husband, Hamish.
Badenoch says Tories are ‘only party that can meet test of our genertion’
Badenoch says she joined the party 20 years ago.
She celebrated all the wins, and felt the pain of ever defeat.
The Tories are “the only party that can meet the test of our generation”, she says.
Badenoch claims her MPs and peers “have more collective wisdom than the rest of parliament put together”.
And she name checks mayors too.
Badenoch thanks the members for standing by the only party that can meet the test of this generation.
Everything relies on being able to deliver a stronger economy and stronger borders, she says.
She says a weak economy and weak borders mean steady decline.
I reject that fate.
The Tories can save Britain from that fate, because they are a strong team.
She name checks her shadow cabinet members.
And she is getting a long standing ovation.
(Not always a good sign for a Tory leader under threat.)
Badenoch is on stage. She has four union flags lined up behind her.
Kemi Badenoch is about to speak.
A video is being showed first, with some of the moments from her first year as leader.
At the Tory conference they have just played the national anthem.
GB News will be pleased.
Devolution ‘failing’ people in Scotland and Wales, senior Tory claims
Devolution isn’t working, a senior member of Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet has said.
Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister and shadow Northern Ireland secretary, made the declaration in the panel discussion at conference this morning.
He implied that the party would be open to some sort of rethink, although he did not elaborate on what he meant. But this is another example of where the party’s thinking is moving away from where it was in the David Cameron era (see 8.11am), when devolution was accepted as a settled constiutional fact.
In response to a question about what Margaret Thatcher would have thought of devolution, Burghart said she would have started with the facts. He went on:
And the facts are these: [it’s] a quarter of a century after the Blairite settlement in Wales and Scotland, and none of the things that the people of Wales and Scotland were promised would happen have happened.
The economy in these areas has not fulfilled its enormous potential. The state of health in Wales is shocking. The state of education in Scotland is unacceptable, and devolution is palpably failing people in those areas. And we have to start with those facts.
Now, where that conversation takes us is a very interesting direction, but we have to be the party that’s prepared to stand up and say what’s actually in the minds of people in Wales and Scotland, that this system isn’t working as it was promised in 1998.
Mims Davies, the shadow Welsh secretary, also said devolution had failed. She told the conference:
Margaret Thatcher … was the woman who said that we need to roll back the frontiers of the state.
What Tony Blair and the devolution settlement has done is devolved. We have forgotten about outcomes. And what we need to do is roll back the frontiers of those devolved areas.
She said the Welsh government was mismanaging the NHS in Wales, but the Labour government at Westminster would not intervene.
In his contribution, Andrew Bowie, the shadow Scottish secretary, said he would not argue that devolution per se had failed. But he said the people of Scotland had been let down because every devolved government had had a “socialist blob mindset”.
Gary Neville’s comment about flag waving ‘deeply offensive’, says shadow Scottish secretary Andrew Bowie
At the Tory conference Mims Davies, the shadow Welsh secretary, Andrew Bowie, the shadow Scottish secretary, and Alex Burghart, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary are speaking on a panel about governance.
On flag waving, Bowie has just said that what Gary Neville said about flag waving was “deeply offensive”.
And Burghart said he went to Northern Ireland during marching season and witnesses a “huge tide of flag waving”. Burhart was very positive about what he saw. People were out with their families, and they were celebrating the flag in a warm, spirited way, he said.
Richard Adams
Richard Adams is the Guardian’s education editor.
Kemi Badenoch’s announcement today that a Conservative government would cut university places based on graduate earnings, and put the savings into apprenticeships (see 8.11am), is a carbon copy of the same policy announced by the last Conservative government in 2024.
Back in May 2024 it was the then education secretary Gillian Keegan who promised that so-called “mickey mouse” courses would be closed down and the notional savings spent on 100,000 apprenticeships. That was less than two months before the general election in July, and Keegan’s plan failed to even make it into the Conservative election manifesto.
