With swagger, Badenoch resurrected the low-tax, low-spend Tories

It was not the biggest rabbit from a hat of all time, but it was met with resounding cheers all the same. The centrepiece of Kemi Badenoch’s conference speech was an announcement that the Conservatives would scrap inheritance tax on family homes and let couples leave an additional £1m to their children tax free. “No stamp duty when you buy your home, no mansion tax when you live in your home and no inheritance tax on your home when you pass it to your children or grandchildren,” she said. “That is what the next Conservative government will deliver.” Most commented 1 Niqabs and burqas harm society, says Tory shadow minister Politics 661 comments 2 Trump: Let Iran take out LA or San Diego US politics 105 comments 3 Zohran Mamdani has betrayed us over Israel, say young socialists US politics 102 comments 4 August Hanning: Ex-German spy chief arrested for espionage and treason Europe 34 comments 5 Asos ‘hacked’: app customers receive alert suggesting data breach Companies & Markets 24 comments The plan by Badenoch to bring the Tories into contention for the next election is simple: to resurrect their reputation as a low-tax, low-spend party. Watch: Kemi Badenoch vows to scrap inheritance tax on family homes This time last year she was on the brink, and her conference speech — including a surprise pledge to scrap stamp duty — proved to be a turning point for her leadership. Top stories 1 New George Clooney, newly French, plans Italian restaurant in Provence Europe 2 New How American billionaires are shaping the future of warfare Technology 3 New The key takeaways from Kemi Badenoch’s conference speech Politics 4 Reform UK clears its own advisers over Channel 4 donations sting Politics 5 New Norwegian princess and shaman husband sue inner circle for m Europe Much has changed since then, not least the fact that Badenoch is now the single, dominant force in the Conservative Party. Robert Jenrick, who last year sat awkwardly alongside his colleagues on the front row as he plotted Badenoch’s demise, is gone . Advertisement Badenoch is now significantly more popular than her party and has become its greatest electoral asset — and it showed. The Tory leader undeniably has a degree of swagger now, a level of self-assurance and confidence. Top stories 1 New The key takeaways from Kemi Badenoch’s conference speech Politics 2 New Southampton’s Tonda Eckert escapes ban for ‘Spygate’ scandal Football 3 New Cristiano Ronaldo reaches new level of delusion with self-parody masterpiece Football 4 New Barclays traders’ convictions quashed after Supreme Court ruling Companies & Markets 5 New Give every child a stake in Britain’s future Economics It was not subtle. She entered the stage to a fanfare of trumpets and positioned the next election as a battle for the soul of the nation between Labour and the Tories, deliberately omitting Reform UK. Labour, she said, wanted to “wind back the clock” and raise taxes. The “new” Conservative Party, she said, would provide the challenge. “Spending money on things we can’t afford is not kind,” she said. Badenoch embraces her husband Hamish after the speech TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE She also played on the party’s 200-year-old history, pointing out that it had met “every single challenge in every single age” and would do so again. “I am not a person that gets written off and neither are the Conservative Party,” she said. At the core of her speech was her message that the Tories are now united after the “export boom of drama queens” to Reform UK. Unlike her opponents, she said, the Tories “actually like each other”. She made an overt appeal to Tory voters who had switched to supporting Reform UK to “come home”. Advertisement “Many of them are our people,” she said. “We let them down and we want them to come back home. They deserve better than Reform politicians. “A year ago those Reform politicians were measuring up the curtains of No 10. Now, some of them are measuring up the curtains of their prison cells .” The most impassioned part of her speech came when she spoke about her pride to be black and British. It was a direct riposte to Suella Braverman, who defected from the Tories to Reform and recently said she could not consider herself to be English because her parents were born abroad. “I am black. I am British. I’m proud of my country … I’m proud of our history,” she said. “I remember 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.” 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. Advertisement 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. That is a fight she believes her party can win.