Kemi Badenoch sought to rally Conservative supporters on Wednesday, declaring that the party was “back in fashion” and prepared for a fight over the “soul of the nation”.
In an impassioned and occasionally emotional address, the Tory leader attacked her political opponents and delivered a scathing assessment of their records.
Her 66-minute speech to party members in Birmingham drew at least a dozen standing ovations, lasting one minute longer than Andy Burnham’s address the previous week.
Mrs Badenoch’s central messages included:
Defiance for the future and Tory turncoats
The Conservative leader warned that the next election would bring a “fight” and a “battle for the soul of the nation”. Defiantly, she insisted she would not be “written off” and pledged to rebuild the party into a “renewed” force capable of winning.
Drawing on the revival of high street retailer M&S, she told delegates that the Conservative Party was “back in fashion”.
“And to think, people were writing us off,” she said, noting that Sir Keir Starmer had been preparing last year for a decade in power but was now no longer even an MP.
“Let me tell you, I am not someone who gets written off and neither is the Conservative Party. Conference, there is a reason our party is still here after 200 years,” the Tory leader declared.
Kemi Badenoch rallied Conservative supporters on Wednesday, saying the party was “back in fashion” and ready to fight for the “soul of the nation”.
Looking back on the Conservatives’ recent election defeats, she said the party had acknowledged where it had gone wrong.
But, returning to her M&S comparison, Mrs Badenoch admitted that voters were still only “looking through the shop window” at the Conservatives rather than choosing to buy into the party.
She said Marks & Spencer had moved from being “stuffy and stuck in the past” to “back in fashion”, a reference made after she attended the retailer’s first-ever London Fashion Week show last month.
Continuing one of the dominant themes of the conference, Mrs Badenoch also directed fierce criticism at Conservatives who defected to Reform UK, including Robert Jenrick, whom she expelled from the party over disloyalty.
“In 2024, voters gave their verdict on the rows, the plots, and the infighting. Remember all that drama? That’s gone,” she said.
“The Conservatives have had an export boom – of drama queens going to Reform. This party is now the no-drama party.”
She said the Tories must win back voters who had switched to Reform, arguing that many remained natural Conservative supporters. “Many of them are our people. We let them down and we want them to come back home,” she said.
PM is all ‘eyelashes and pork scratchings’
Mrs Badenoch also launched a personal attack on the Prime Minister, saying Andy Burnham was all “fluttering eyelashes and pork scratchings”.
She ridiculed the PM’s claim that opening No10 North had been the best day of his life, while also attacking his handling of defence, the national debt and welfare.
Kemi Badenoch pictured with her husband Hamish after delivering her closing speech at the Conservative Party conference.
Accusing him of making unaffordable promises based on figures that did not add up, she warned that he was “not serious”.
‘Don’t let this man fool you with his fluttering eyelashes and his pork scratchings,’ she said.
‘He said opening No 10 North was the best day of his life. Really? It’s got a fake Cabinet room, a cardboard cutout of Larry the cat and the address isn’t even No 10! It’s all make-believe.’
She questioned Mr Burnham’s decision to relaunch the Brexit wars after saying he did not want to rerun the referendum during his election campaign. Referring to his party conference speech, she criticised him for not talking about funding defence, getting borrowing under control and stopping illegal immigration.
‘I am shocked that this Prime Minister doesn’t have defence, the economy, immigration, or crime in his priorities. This is not serious.’
She also rubbished his ‘Hope Again’ slogan, telling delegates: ‘Hope is not a strategy.’
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Paddington Bear won’t save us from Putin
The Tory leader mocked Mr Burnham’s record on defence as she branded him a ‘Paddington Bear prime minister’ who won’t keep us safe from Russia.
Mrs Badenoch said it worried her that Mr Burnham had failed to mention funding defence in his speech as she said that the era of peace was over. Dismissing him as ‘not serious’, she poured scorn on his record as a Shadow Cabinet member under Jeremy Corbyn.
‘The last thing this country needs is a Paddington Bear prime minister, hoping that the problems go away, while Putin attacks our allies, while our economy flatlines,’ she told delegates.
Mocking his record, she added: ‘Let’s be honest, if Russia sends a missile to hit Manchester, £2 bus fares are not going to save us.’
She added: ‘This is a man who was happy to serve in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet. Nodding along to a man who wanted to take the UK out of Nato, give up our nuclear deterrent, and even disband our Army.’
She added that the first duty of any government was defence of the realm as she said cutting welfare will allow the country to fund defence. The Tories this week have set out plans for a ‘Britannia shield’ to protect the UK from missiles and drones.
Plan for growth and major tax reforms
Putting growth at the centre of her economic pitch yesterday, Mrs Badenoch promised voters prosperity ‘that you can actually see and feel’.
She said her plan would be centred on cheap energy, and cutting the deficit, without which economic growth would be impossible. The Tory leader condemned the eye-watering complexity of the tax system, quipping that, at 23,000 pages long, it was bigger than ‘all seven Harry Potter novels, the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare combined, four times over’, adding: ‘No wonder our economy isn’t growing!’
She outlined a vision of a future growing economy, in which pensioners are able to do their weekly food shop and have cash left over to take their family out to a café, in which graduates have an abundance of jobs to choose from, and where building infrastructure can go ahead without being blocked by bats and newts.
Mrs Badenoch also blasted Mr Burnham’s rumoured plans to U-turn on building a third runway at Heathrow.
Punishments that fit the crimes
Tougher minimum sentences for the worst crimes would be introduced if the Tories win the next election, Mrs Badenoch said.
The Tory leader said the justice system must see ‘punishment which fits the crime, real consequences, criminals behind bars and communities feeling safe again’. The new pledge came alongside a commitment to roll out the largest prison building programme in modern history, adding 50,000 new spaces.
She spoke movingly about the safety of young people, talking about Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, who were murdered by a paranoid schizophrenic in Nottingham in 2023.
Kemi Badenoch and her husband Hamish wave to delegates after delivering her Keynote speech on the final day of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham
Grace’s father, Sanjoy Kumar, was sitting in the audience as Mrs Badenoch accused the state of institutional failure to protect people. Mr Kumar said yesterday that his daughter had ‘been failed’, adding: ‘I lost my daughter, my beautiful and brave Gracie, who was killed fighting a man who was psychotic – and we’ve not had any accountability. It’s the role of any government to keep its people safe.’
Ballooning benefits system is broken
The welfare system is ‘broken’ and benefits claimants need ‘tough love’ rather than handouts to help them back into work, Mrs Badenoch said.
Seeking to draw a clear dividing line between Labour and the Conservatives on benefits spending, the Tory leader said the ‘best welfare is a well-paying job’.
Mrs Badenoch said: ‘Our welfare system is broken, we spend more on benefits than we raise in income tax.
‘And we are incentivising low-value immigration to our country. We need to put the fair back in welfare. We need tough love.
‘It is morally wrong to tell people suffering bouts of mild anxiety that they are disabled and cannot work.’
The Conservatives have made the need for welfare reform a central feature of the party conference, outlining new plans to slash the bloated benefits bill.
Under Tory plans, school and university leavers will be banned from going straight on to Universal Credit, and will instead have to undergo intensive work coaching. Those who fail to find or accept work after six months will be placed on a new subsistence allowance, paying 70 per cent of the basic Universal Credit rate.
Handouts would be paid on to a card that could not be spent on drinking, smoking or gambling.
‘If you haven’t paid in, you shouldn’t be taking out,’ Mrs Badenoch said. ‘Conservatives don’t believe in a something-for-nothing culture.’