Here is some reaction to Kemi Badenoch’s speech from commentators.

James Heale at the Spectator says Badenoch’s speech marks the return of conviction politics.

Most conference speeches are significant for only one moment. Kemi Badenoch’s address to the Tory faithful today had two of note. The first was a highly energised, full-throated assault on Reform UK in a moment which signified the death of any ‘Unite the right’ campaign while she remains leader. The second was her pledge to legislate to stop inheritance tax being levied on family homes. Together, they mark the return to conviction politics after an era in which men like Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak were more comfortable making technical arguments. Badenoch’s speech, following Andy Burnham’s turn last week, was deeply ideological, explicitly welcoming the return to a proper ‘battle of ideas’ when parliament resumes sitting on Monday.

From Ben Riley-Smith from the Sunday Times

What did Kemi Badenoch go big on in her Tory conference closer:

Tax cut for those with wealth, being the party of homeowners, no lost childcare if you earn over £100k, saying Tories will let you keep more of your money.

What did Badenoch not go big on:

Small boats. Immigration. Lots of culture wars stuff. The ECHR.

Felt like a speech aimed more at Middle England / Lib Dem waverers than Red Wall Reform hardliners. (‘Stronger borders’ literally dropped from the 2025 conference slogan this year.)

The big attack on Farage and Reform was done on character not policy - rejecting its view of Englishness.

The Tories clearly see the path back to office as owning the economy.

Steven Swinford and Oliver Wright at the Times say the speech shows Badenoch wants to fight the next election on tax and spend.

Interestingly, despite the speech lasting well over an hour, Badenoch barely addressed the issue of migration,choosing instead to focus on the economy, where polling shows that the Tories are trusted more than other party.

And there was a coherence to the offer. At last year’s conference speech she pledged to abolish stamp duty when people moved home, and in this year’s speech she promised that no one would pay tax on that home when they died.

Badenoch is gambling that the next election will be fought not on Reform’s turf of culture wars, but on a much more traditional divide between tax and spend.

From ITV’s Robert Peston

Badenoch announces no one will pay inheritance tax on the value of the family home. Which brings the risk that no older person will sell before they die. Oh dear. And she says she will add £1m to the tax free inheritance tax threshold

From the pollster Luke Tryl

Think that’s the toughest I’ve seen a Tory leader been on Reform since their emergence as a serious political force, directly taking on claims about Englishness and identity from some Reform politicians. Feels a significant change in approach.

We know there are a group of newer Reform voters who are attracted to Nigel Farage and who are willing to roll the dice on something different, but who recoil from what they see as too extreme. Recent suggestions about Englishness of English football team fall into that category.

From John Rentoul at the Independent

The message of that speech was that she will have no truck with Reform. “To those who say ‘unite the right’: we are not uniting with that.” The most powerful section was her denunciation of politicians who suggest that you cannot be Black and British. “We are not like them. We are different. We are the Conservative Party.”

But apart from that, it was a long, rather disconnected lecture setting out the case for a Tory party that believes in living within our means against a Labour Party that wants to tax, spend and borrow.

From Steve Richards, the writer and broadcaster

A well delivered speech from K Badenoch.. but sums don’t remotely add up in her ‘something for everyone’ speech..and the ‘something’ was largely targeted at a few wealthy voters. She’s right to rule out any deal with Reform..but that means her future depends on Reform collapse

From the Times columnist Sonia Sodha

Naturally I disagreed with a lot of that speech from Badenoch but that was a strong and characteristically-punchy speech, reckon the Tories will be pleased with that.

From Alastair Campbell from the Rest is Politics podcast (and a former Labour spin doctor)

Well that was certainly a barnstorming speech so far as the audience in the hall was concerned. BUT there was a glaring clash with the more thoughtful essay @KemiBadenoch published at the weekend in which she rightly said parties should not spray out promises without being clear about the assessments made, the trade offs required and the consequences analysed. Sadly she didn’t do any of that in the speech. “Something for everyone” only happens in La La land. Nor did she adequately deal with the “you’ve had fourteen years” problem she rightly identified in her booklet.

Her position as leader is rock solid. Farage will have felt a bit of heat from it. And there is a proper big argument between the main parties. But the Tories will have to do a lot more work on serious policy and serious atonement! As I said on @RestIsPolitics today though, she certainly has confidence!!

Ali Fortescue at Sky News says Badenoch’s key announcement was not a complete surprise, but “rabbit adjacent”.

Paul Johnson, the former head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told Sky News that getting rid of inheritance tax could turn out to be a “very, very bad policy” because it might stop older people selling their homes. It might give people “an even bigger incentive just to hold on to big homes for longer and longer”, he said

As the Financial Times reports, Johnson told Sky News that the measure risked undoing the benefits of the “good” idea of abolishing stamp duty announced by the Tories last year.

Reform UK claims that only 2% of homes will be benefit from Kemi Badenoch’s proposal to exempt family homes from inheritance tax. And most of them are in London, the party says, citing a calculation based on house price figures from Savills.

Robert Jenrick, the former Tory who is now Reform UK’s Treasury spokesperson, said:

As usual, Kemi has chickened out of doing anything big. Presumably, it’s because she couldn’t match Reform’s pledge to resign if she doesn’t deliver on her promises.

While the Tory party is offering handouts to multi-millionaires, Reform will give everyone a £500 tax cut by raising the tax-free personal allowance to £15,000. The Tory party is looking after its own in Kensington, Reform is looking after the country.

She’s for the 2%, we’re for 98%.

Labour has said that Kemi Badenoch’s conference speech shows that the Conservative party is just prioritising the very rich.

In a response to the speech, Bridget Phillipson, the Labour chair, said:

The Tories haven’t changed. Kemi Badenoch has shown that the Tories’ choice is to do nothing to help ordinary families struggling with the cost of social care, prioritising the wealthiest instead. Only Labour will build a National Care Service, with free personal care for all older people who need it.

Kemi Badenoch’s Tories wouldn’t take this country the “right way”. They would put Britain into reverse with the same Tory failures that crashed our economy and left public services crumbling. That’s not a future anyone wants to see.

The Conservative party has handed out some figures explaining how they have costed their promises.

Here are the figures.

Savings from cuts they were proposing at last year’s conference – £47bn

Total savings from welfare cuts they are proposing now – £36bn

Total savings from all cuts they are proposing now – £71bn

Total spending commitments being proposed now – £34bn

This chart shows that the inheritance tax (IHT) policy announced by Kemi Badenoch is costed at £6bn. (Last year’s headline conference tax cut, abolishing stamp duty on homes, is costed at £9bn.)

Kemi Badenoch revived her personal approval ratings (but not her party’s) with her conference speech last year, which proposed abolishing stamp duty, and today she was under pressure to match that with another Big Idea. It is unusual for a party to place so much emphasis on a “retail offer” at this stage in the electoral cycle (because who knows what state the economy will be in by 2029), but there might be an election sooner and Tory electoral ratings are so poor that she probably cannot afford to play safe. Promising to abolish inheritance tax for homes will be hugely popular with her party, and with the rightwing media, and almost certainly with voters at large too.

But that does not necessarily mean it is good public policy. Badenoch seems to be incentivising older people to buy ever bigger homes at a stage in life where it would make more sense to downsize. It is a huge tax break for wealthy families living in London and the south of England, and coming after two other announcements aimed at exactly this demographic (see 10.14am), it means Tory conference 2026 has probably done more to widen social inequality than any other party conference in recent history. Or it would if these policies ever actually happen. “Retail offers” only work if voters think a party will be in a position to implement them, and the Tories may find that on this front doubts remain.

Badenoch’s speech was clear, and very, very confident. But there was more assertion, than argument; Andy Burnham’s was probably better in terms of telling a story about what has gone wrong with Britain over the past few decades. Burnham also exuded warmth; there was none of that from Badenoch, but plenty of force, and even nastiness. Around the world leaders like Donald Trump are getting elected on the basis that, although clearly unpleasant, they are at least tough. If Britain goes down that route, Badenoch will thrive. But recently we have tended to elect leaders who are at least likeable, and on this measure Badenoch does not score so well.

The speech was remarkable in part for the amount of time she spent lambasting her opponents. She was quite nasty about Keir Starmer and Burnham, contemptuous of the Greens and – in one of the most interesting passages of the speech – highly critical of Reform UK. (See 12.17pm.) This time last year, all the talk was of a possible pact. Now she dismissed them as criminal. (This passage did not fit very well with her tributes to Jeffrey Archer, who may have been great company but was also a scoundrel, and Ann Widdecombe, who was clear proof than not everyone in Reform UK is a rogue or a crook.)

The best passage in the speech was the attack on people like Suella Braverman in Reform UK flirting with ethnonationalism, and the claim that black people cannot be English. (See 12.20pm.) It has taken Badenoch a while to speak out on this, and she has been silent when some of her own MPs have dabbled in this territory. It was powerful and personal. But she was wrong to suggest that “when Ian Wright and John Barnes were playing, nobody was questioning whether they were English”. There was plenty of racism in football in that era and this was another example of a Badenoch assertion running ahead of the facts.

Badenoch is now on her peroration.

If you run a business, we will get government out of your way and cut your taxes.

If you are a parent, you will make sure free childcare is never removed because of a pay rise.

If you want to own your home, we will scrap stamp duty and make houses cheaper to build.

If you’re a woman who knows biological sex is real like the Darlington nurses do, we will protect your privacy.

If you are a police officer who puts your life on the line like Sergeant Martin Blake did, we will back you.

If you’re a mother in a village threatened with a migrant camp like in Piddington, and you want your children to feel safe, we will deport illegal immigrants, not house them.

If you are worried about the threat of Russia or Iran, we will keep Britain safe.

If you’re leaving school, we’ll let you choose between work, university or a high quality apprenticeship.

If you’re a graduate paying over and above for your student loans, we will end the interest rate rip off.

If you are a farmer, we will end the family farms tax.

If you are a veteran, we will protect you from malicious prosecution.

If you are a victim of crime, the perpetrators will be locked up.

If you are on welfare, we will get you into work.

If you are under 25, we will make it easier for you to get a job.

If you have retired, we will protect your pension.

And if you want to pass on your home to your family, we will make sure you don’t pay a penny in tax.

We have something for everyone.

Badenoch has more for her audience.

On top of that, couples will be able to leave an additional £1m tax free.

And these changes mean every inheritance tax bill will be cut and the number of families paying inheritance tax will fall by more than half.

Conference, my ambition, my ambition is to abolish inheritance tax altogether as soon as we can afford it.

That can only happen with a Conservative government. I believe the people who work hard and say should be rewarded for that effort.

Badenoch turns to inheritance tax.

She says she is not abolishing inheritance tax at this conference.

She goes on:

Everybody’s been asking me about inheritance tax.

So let’s talk about it.

We are not abolishing inheritance tax at this conference.

I know you’re disappointed.

We could do it, but not if we want to keep our country safe with the Britannia Shield. Not if we also want to keep people safe, with 50,000 new prison places. Not if we want to cut the deficit threatening to bankrupt our country and burdening our children.

Governing is about choices, tough choices, and Conservatives will not announce a tax cut without telling you how we are going to pay for it.

She says inheritance tax has become a tax affecting “ordinary middle class families in every corner of our country”.

She goes on:

So let’s go back to first principles.

What is the thing that most people want to pass on to their children and grandchildren? It is their family home.

Conference, the Conservatives are and always have been the party of home ownership. We understand why putting roots down and having a stake in society matters. Our homes are where we watch our children take their first steps. They are where we gather every Christmas to put up the same decorations.

Passing on your to your family is one of the most human instincts of all.

So, conference, the next Conservative government will legislate so nobody will ever pay inheritance tax on their family home.

Badenoch confirms that the Tories remain committed to their “golden economic rule”, which means spending 50% of any savings on debt reduction.

She claims the party has already identified savings woth more than £70bn.

For every pound we save, 50p will go towards cutting the deficit. We have already identified over £70 billion of savings. That means we will cut the deficit we inherit from Labour by more than £35 billion.

Restoring confidence in public finances is essential to economic growth.

(This is significant. Last year the Tories said they had identified cuts worth £47bn. That means there is an extra £23bn notionally available which means, allowing for the golden rule, Badenoch is in a postion to announce a tax cut worth around £10bn.)

Badenoch says the country is running out of money.

But Labour is just proposing a “tax doom loop that is making us all poorer”, she says.

Badenoch says people think Conservatives are opposed to change. But that is wrong.

The world is constantly changing. New technologies, new challenges, new opportunities. It is only by adapting that we can preserve the very best of this country and hand something better onto the next generation. That is what being a Conservative means.

Andy Burnham says that we all just need to hope. Again. Hope is not a strategy. And since the last thing this country needs is a Paddington Bear prime minister hoping that the problems will just go away while Putin attacks our allies, while our economy flat lines.

Burnham wants to turn the clock back to the 1970s. Nostalgia is not a plan for our country.

Andy Burnham is promising a better yesterday. What I am promising is a better tomorrow.

Badenoch goes on to attack Reform UK over politicians like Suella Braveman suggesting that black people cannot be English. She says:

I don’t want to live in a country run by people who threaten journalists, who call veterans ‘traitors’ and debate whether my mixed-race children are English.

I don’t want to explain to my son when I’m watching our brilliant England team play football that some people don’t think our black players are English.

I remember back in the day when Ian Wright and John Barnes were playing, nobody was questioning whether they were English. We certainly didn’t have sitting MPs questioning whether they were English.

We must not let these people take us backwards. That is not the country we are. Reform MPs are openly questioning people’s identity.

We are not like us, we are not like them, we are different, we are the Conservative party.

This gets one of the loudest rounds of applause of the speech so far.

UPDATE: Badenoch also said:

We are the Conservative party.

Back in the day, we were the ones who put out a poster saying Labour says he’s black, we say he’s British.

We are still that same party.

I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but I am black.

I am British.

I’m proud of my country, I’m proud of our history.

All that we have done, and all that we will do in the world.

Our best days are not behind us, and we will not let this country go backwards.

Badenoch moves on to attack Reform UK. She says many Reform supporters are “our people”. But she attacks the party’s leadership.

We deserve better than Reform politicians. A year ago, those politicians were measuring up the curtains for No 10. Now, some of them are measuring up the curtains for their prison cells.

Let’s go through their greatest hits. Their leader in Wales was sent to prison for taking bribes from Russia. His successor then had to stand down after he was arrested last month. The police are investigating not just Robert Jenrick’s donations, but Richard Tice’s company as well.

Farage’s fishy £5m personal gift … The brown envelopes they boasted about on camera. Just when you think Reform couldn’t get any easier, there’s a convicted fraudster who calls himself ‘Posh George’ and calls Nigel Farage ‘daddy’.

And she rules out a pact with them.

The circus goes on and on and will never stop because this is who Reform politicians are. So to those who say ‘unite the right’, we are not uniting with that. People deserve better, they deserve better.

Badenoch criticises Burnham for wanting to have another debate on Brexit.

[Burnham] wants to reopen the Brexit debate. Can you imagine having to go through that again? So much time lost. Arguing with ourselves, arguing with the EU, going round and round in circles, businesses not knowing whether they should invest. He wants to do it all again. I think that is a terrible idea.

The last thing we should do right now is rerun those arguments. Those were Andy Burnham’s exact words when he was campaigning in Makerfield.

(Interestingly, Badenoch does not address Burnham’s main claim, that Brexit has done “more harm than good”.

Badenoch criticises Burnham on policy.

In Liverpool last week, [Burnham] promised a National Care Service at a cost of £18 billion, without a plan to pay for it.

Yet again, we have a Labour prime minister making a promise that he cannot deliver, with sums that do not add up.

This is the wrong way of doing things. Fifty years ago the state was failing to run businesses. It had no business running British Leyland, British Telecom, British Airways, British Steel government – couldn’t manage them properly.

In fact, political interference made their problems worse.

Andy Burnham is wilfully ignorant of those lessons.

He doesn’t want to know because it doesn’t fit his worldview, so he is going to make the same mistakes and we will all pay for those mistakes.

Badenoch launches a sustained attack on Andy Burnham, accusing him of being unprincipled and opportunist.

Labour are putting all their hope in just one man, but they don’t get a clean slate just because they have changed leader.

We are going to hold them to account and expose every single failure.

In fact, Andy Burnham doesn’t have a clean slate. This is a man he was happy to serve in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. He wasn’t the junior Defra PPS, he was the shadow home secretary, nodding along to a man who wanted to take the UK out of Nato, give up our nuclear deterrent and even disband our army.

When Andy Burnham was in opposition with Corbyn, he didn’t feel a need to change the leader.

But after Keir Starmer won a landslide, Burnham couldn’t wait to get back and take it off him.

That is who Andy Burnham is. Don’t let this man fool you with his fluttering eyelashes and his pork scratchings.

He said opening No 10 North was the best day of his life. Really? It’s got a fake cabinet room, a cardboard cut-out of Larry the Cat. And the address isn’t even number ten. It’s all make believe.

Badenoch says the Tories have changed – like M&S.

We have changed our party.

There is still a lot of work to do. People are looking through the shop window. They like what they see. But let’s be honest, not enough of them are buying it. We need to fix that.

A few weeks ago I was at London Fashion Week attending Marks and Spencer’s first ever catwalk show.

M&S is a brand that has been around for a hundred years. Not so long ago, critics said they were a bit stuffy and stuck in the past. Some were even questioning whether the brand would survive. Do you see where I’m going with this conference?

M&S is back in fashion. Great looks at affordable prices. They have adapted their style for today’s market and people are flooding back, including me.

Badenoch says Tory MPs like each other.

And she urges people to stand for parliament as Conservatives.

If you’ve never thought about a career in politics, now’s your time.

We want talent from all walks of life.

Every single Conservative MP and candidate must bring Conservative values and principles to the table and stick to them.

So conference, all our candidates will sign a commitment to these high standards – integrity, duty, discipline. Common sense is non-negotiable.

The country needs to know that when you vote Conservative, you get Conservative.

Badenoch says the Tories have learned from their mistakes.

Unlike Andy Burnham, I believe we need to learn from the past, not live in the past.

We have acknowledged our mistakes. We have set out what this party believes.

We are making it clear that those beliefs are expected of everyone who stands for us.

In the past, we had people who used our party to get elected and then betrayed our values.

I am building a united team of people, a team motivated by public service, not self-service.

And she says she has got rid of the trouble makers.

The plots and the infighting. Remember all that drama that’s gone?

The Conservatives have had an export boom. We have had an export boom of drama queens going to reform.

Badenoch says the Tories have shown they have a plan to get Britain working.

She turns to Labour.

What’s Labour been up to this last year?

Keir Starmer, remember him? Last year he was talking about being in power for a decade.

Now he’s not even an MP.

Life comes at you pretty fast.

(Her tone is quite harsh here. She seems to be gloating.)

She goes on:

And to think people were writing us off.

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.

Badenoch starts:

Conference, 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.

(Only Badenoch would start a speech promising a fight in the first sentence.)

She is reading the passage briefed in advance. (See 8am.)

Lumsden says people in Aberdeen expected a decision about the Jackdaw and Rosebank gas and oil fields two weeks ago.

But, he says, Andy Burnham deferred a decision, “leaving thousands of jobs in the balance just to try and win a few more votes in London tomorrow”.

Lumsden is referring to the Jackdaw gas field application, which the government is expected to approve. Ministers have been accused of delaying it until after the Holborn and St Pancras byelection tomorrow because in that contest Labour needs the support of people who might be leaning Green, and it is thought they will not approve of Jackdaw going ahead.

Douglas Lumsden, who won the Aberdeen South byelection for the party, is now introducing Kemi Badenoch.

He says he never expected to be there.

He says Aberdeen South is “300 miles north of No 10 North”.

He says he does not blame people if the byelction result came as a surprise. None of the candidates were running to be PM, or escaping from dodgy finance allegations. There were no former hypnotists on the ballot. And, unlike Zack Polanski, the only thing he wanted to grow was the economy.

He says Badenoch was right to say the byelection was not about one person’s job; it was about the jobs of thousands of people in the oil and gas industry.

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.

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%).

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.

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