Badenoch says pro-Palestine marches have become ‘carnivals of hatred’ and that should no longer be tolerated
Badenoch says Yom Kippur is a time for introspection. And it is time for Britain to consider what has gone wrong.
She says Britain has allowed extremism to go unchecked.
She says the pro-Palestine marches have become “carnivals of hatred directed at the Jewish homeland”.
She says the protests “asinine slogans”.
You hear it in ‘from the river to the sea’, as if the homes and the lives of millions of Jewish people should be erased.
You hear it in ‘globalise the intifada’, which means nothing at all if it doesn’t mean targeting Jewish people for violence.
We have tolerated this in our country for too long …
We must now draw a line and say that in Britain you can think what you like, and within the bounds of the law you can say what you like, but you have no right to turn our streets into the theatres of intimidation, and we will not let you do so anymore.
Key events
Badenoch says Tories will draw up plan to ensure ECHR withdrawal works in Northern Ireland
Badenoch says Wolfson has concluded that leaving the ECHR is not incompatible with the Good Friday agreement. She goes on:
I know that there will be particular challenges in Northern Ireland.
But difficulties are not a reason to avoid action. They are a reason to work harder to get it right.
She says she is going to ask Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, to carry out a review into union-wide implementation of the plan. That will be put to the people at the electon. She says it will be “a clear, thorough and robust plan, not the vague mush”.
Badenoch is now talking about immigration.
She says many of the problems in Britain relate to the use of litigation as a political weapon – what she calls lawfare.
She says laws like ECHR are “now being used in ways never intended by their original authors”.
She says the whole system needs to change, but she will start with the ECHR.
None of us had a problem with the rights in the original charter. It was drafted in 1950 by British lawyers, Conservative lawyers, and it drew on British traditions.
The problems stem from how it has been enforced and how its meaning has been twisted and changed.
Today, it is used as a block on deportations, a weapon against veterans and a barrier to sentencing and public order.
Labour pretend it can be fixed.
But when a group of nine European countries, led by Italy, recently pushed for reforms at the court, the Labour government did not support them.
Badenoch says she set out five tests for whether or not the UK should remain in the ECHR. She asked Lord Wolfson KC, the shadow attorney general, to carry out an analysis of this. (See 12.13pm.)
She quotes from Wolfson’s conclusion.
When it comes to control of our sovereign borders, preventing our military veterans from being pursued indefinitely, ensuring prison sentences are applied rigorously for serious crimes, stopping disruptive protests, or placing blanket restrictions on foreign nationals in terms of social housing and benefits, the only way such positions are feasible would be to leave the ECHR.
And she says the shadow cabinet has decided, on that basis, that the UK should leave the ECHR.
Badenoch rejects claim Tories did not achieve anything during their 14 years in office
Badenoch says Labour are wrong to claim that the Tories achieved nothing in office.
We slashed the deficit every year, so that when the pandemic hit, we had the means to weather the storm.
We reformed our schools to put rigour back into the curriculum, and today, a whole generation of young people will enter the world with better maths and literary skills than any generation before them.
We reformed welfare, we got people into work, four million new jobs were created, over a million new businesses.
She goes on to Brexit – claiming it has brought benefits.
We gave the British people a choice on our membership of the EU and we implemented that decison. And what followed? The fastest vaccine rollout in the West, billions of pounds worth of trade deals.
No other party would have done these things, but they were right for our country, and we can all be proud of them.
Badenoch says Britain needs to start doing politics in a new way.
But change won’t be easy, she says.
I didn’t say it would be easy, and I didn’t say it would be quick. Nothing really worth doing is.
Anyone who tells you that there are easy answers to the big questions our country faces is either lying to you or lying to themselves.
We are taking a new approach, credible plans rooted in Conservative values.
Hard though the task is, we have plenty of reasons to be cheerful, because, as one of my great predecessors, Margaret Thatcher, put it, the facts of life are conservative.
Badenoch says pro-Palestine marches have become ‘carnivals of hatred’ and that should no longer be tolerated
Badenoch says Yom Kippur is a time for introspection. And it is time for Britain to consider what has gone wrong.
She says Britain has allowed extremism to go unchecked.
She says the pro-Palestine marches have become “carnivals of hatred directed at the Jewish homeland”.
She says the protests “asinine slogans”.
You hear it in ‘from the river to the sea’, as if the homes and the lives of millions of Jewish people should be erased.
You hear it in ‘globalise the intifada’, which means nothing at all if it doesn’t mean targeting Jewish people for violence.
We have tolerated this in our country for too long …
We must now draw a line and say that in Britain you can think what you like, and within the bounds of the law you can say what you like, but you have no right to turn our streets into the theatres of intimidation, and we will not let you do so anymore.
Badenoch is speaking about Manchester, and she says the first Jewish community was established here in the 1780s. They have been part of the fabric of the city, while embracing Britain as their home.
The attack on Thursday shocked everyone, she says.
She says she visited the site of the attack yesterday.
The strength of Manchester’s Jewish community is humbling.
Targeting the centre of community life on the holiest day of the year was not just an attack on British Jews, it was an attack on all of us.
Kemi Badenoch is on the stage now to deliver the first of her two speeches to conference.
This one about the plan to tackle illegal immigration.
The main one will come on Wednesday.
At the conference Darren Millar, the Welsh Tory leader, is speaking now. He has just attacked the Labour government over various policies, including its “nation of sanctuary” scheme.
In a post on his Substack blog, the Welsh political commentator Will Hayward argues Millar’s recent attacks on this amount to “outrageous hypocrisy” because in 2016 the Welsh Tory manifesto backed exactly this sort of scheme, and Millar himself in the past spoke up for this approach.
Tories urged to show ‘contritition’ and ‘penitence’ for their ‘failures’ in speech to party conference by star new recruit
Syed says he thinks it is a risk for the Tories to spend too much time condemning the Labour party for its failures. People are not listening.
And he is using the line about contrition. (See 2.44pm.)
What that public wishes for is contrition, a certain type of penitence, a genuine sense that the Tory party understands the scale of its own failures. Then, I believe, the British public will win again.
He says, just as Margaret Thatcher turned the country around after it moved too far to the left, he thinks Kemi Badenoch could do the same thing again. He urges the Tories not to chase short-term polls, and to “play the long game”.
He ends saying it is “not impossible, in fact … likely” that the Tories could win the next election.
(It is a good speech, which gets a decent reception, although if Syed thinks the Tories need to show “penitance” and stop condemning Labour for everything, then it is hard to understand why he places so much faith in Badenoch.)
Matthew Syed, the Sunday Times columnist and broadcaster, is addressing the conference now.
Syed stood for parliament as a Labour candidate in 2001, and tried again to get selected as a candidate in 2010. In a recent column, he said he was told he was the oustanding candidate, but someone favoured by the trade unions was selected again. “It gives me no pleasure to say this but the modern Labour party is institutionally dysfunctional, perhaps even institutionally corrupt,” Syed wrote in the article.
And in a column last week, he explained why he was joining the Tories. He said it was because he thought they were the only party serious about getting debt under control.
Why do I see the Tories, the party most implicated in our predicament, as possible salvation? Well, from the vantage point of 2025 Kemi Badenoch is the only leader starting to glimpse the truth. She has talked of simplifying the tax code, slimming the welfare state, cutting debt. There’s even a recognition that we must reduce taxes on income and productive capital to boost growth (I’d fund this with taxes on unproductive land, but I know many readers disagree) and close tax loopholes for the super-rich. She is also getting serious about immigration, the greatest Tory failure of all.
But there is only one way for this party to gain a hearing from the British people. Stop those ridiculous Jenrick videos castigating Labour for our woes. Stop the shadow cabinet pointing the finger at Starmer. Nobody is listening to the party whose fingerprints are all over the crime scene. Instead, for 12 months minimum, show penitence. Explain sincerely and forensically what you got wrong. Get down on your knees. Only then might the British people be persuaded you have learnt from your catastrophic mistakes.
Syed is making a similar argument now but, curiously, he has not used the line about Robert Jenrick’s videos being “ridiculous”, and he has not told the Tories to “get down on your knees” (at least, so far).
Margaret Thatcher was born on 13 October 1925 and the Conservative party is marking her 100th birthday at the conference. (See 1pm for an example.) In his speech Kevin Hollinrake, the Tory chair, says:
On tax and spending, particularly welfare spending, we are the only party still right of centre, still right on the economy and still right for Britain.
You can’t build a strong country on borrowed money. In Yorkshire we know you must live within your means. You must not waste what you’ve earned, and you always look after public money as if it were your own.
In her 100th year anniversary, Mrs. Thatcher would be proud that her party is the only one who understands that we are spending other people’s money.
