Badenoch attacks Tory government’s record on net zero targets
Badenoch says the Tories stopped acting like Conservatives.
Net zero is a good example, she says.
We set a target with no plan on how to meet it, just so politicians could say we were the first country to do so. Now we have a net zero strategy addicted to state subsidy, making energy more expensive and hurting our economy. I am not a climate change sceptic, but I am a net zero sceptic.
Key events
Badenoch says she ‘rewire, reboot and reprogram’ British state, with comprehensive review
Badenoch calls for fight against socialism and identity politics
Badenoch attacks Tory government’s record on net zero targets
Badenoch says she is Conservative because she knows what it’s like living in country without security and freedom
Kemi Badenoch tells Tories ‘the system is broken’ and ‘it’s time to tell the truth’
Jenrick says he’s opposed to interim net zero targets
Jenrick calls for effective freeze in net migration
Jenrick says he wants nothing less than ‘new Conservative party’
Jenrick claims Labour just offering ‘managed decline’
Jenrick says he wants to turn Tories into ‘pressure group for hard-working majority’
Jenrick praises his ‘heroine’ Thatcher
Robert Jenrick speaks to Tory conference
Cleverly says Tories ‘have no right to govern’ but ‘govern where we get it right’
Cleverly claims he is candidate Labour, Lib Dems and Reform UK ‘fear the most’
‘Now is not the time for an apprentice’, says Cleverly
Cleverly stresses his experience, saying as foreign secretary he took tough stance against Russia and China
Cleverly tells Tories they have to be ‘for stuff’ – because that is how they have always succeeded
Cleverly rules out pact with Reform UK
Cleverly says he knows what it’s like to suffer setbacks in life
Cleverly starts with apology to Tory members on behalf of MPs, saying they ‘let you down’
James Cleverly speaks to Tory conference
Tugendhat suggests his rivals are managers, while he is a leader
Tugendhat says he will curb immigration, not just with cap, but by training British workers to fill job vacancies
Tugendhat says Labour ‘most venal and vindictive administration in decades’
Tugendhat stresses his leadership credentials as former soldier
Tugendhat starts with optimistic note, saying Tories can win again
Tom Tugendhat speaks to Tory conference
Badenoch dodges questions on how she would block migrants who don’t ‘love’ UK, saying it’s wrong to make policy now
Tugendhat criticises Jenrick for including soldier he knew, who’s now dead and can’t defend himself, in controversial video
Cleverly defends calling for abolition of stamp duty on homes
Farage dismisses Tory calls for pact with Reform UK, saying he wants to ‘replace’ Conservatives not collaborate
New Conservatives, party of wealth creation, or politics ‘with a smile’ – Tory leadership candidates to set out rival visions
All four candidate are now on stage together taking applause. (This morning officials were saying they did not expect a group photgraph to happen.)
The conference is now ending with a rendition of the national anthem.
Badenoch ended by saying she wanted:
A Britain that is friends with its neighbors but will always proudly protect its national interests, a Britain at ease with itself, a Britain that believes in itself and that sort of Britain can only come about because of renewed conservative principles,
The time to start that renewal is right now.
Badenoch says she ‘rewire, reboot and reprogram’ British state, with comprehensive review
Badenoch says she wants to “rewrite the rules of the game”. He explains:
If I become leader, we will immediately begin a,once in a generation undertaking, the sort of project not attempted since the days of Keith Joseph in the 1970s, a comprehensive plan to reprogram the British state, to reboot the British economy … one that goes far beyond the relationship with the EU or the ECHR, a plan that considers every aspect of what the state does and why it does it …
A plan built on the principles and priorities of our nation, a plan that looks at our international agreements, at the Human Rights Act, the Equality Act, at judicial review and judicial activism, at the Treasury and the Bank of England, at devolutions and quango, at the civil service and the health service. At how we use power to give power to the British people.
We will rewire, reboot and reprogram. Nothing is more exciting to me. I am an engineer, and engineers do not hide from the truth.
Badenoch says Blairism is still embedded in politics.
The stealthy poisoning of our society needs to stop.
And let’s face it, Liberal Democrats are not going to defend our country.
Unlike the left, we know right from wrong, but we allowed ourselves to be bound by aggressive identity politics, by a Treasury whose rules were written by Gordon Brown and a legal system re-engineered by Tony Blair.
You may think Blair and Brown were defeated in 2010 but the truth is, the left never left. It’s time to make a change.
Badenoch defends her record on trans issues.
For too long, government stayed silent as women were sacked for saying that a man cannot be a woman.
I fought for them while Labour called them bigots, and it wasn’t until the SNP put a sex offender in a women’s prison that they understood the fight I was leading. We won that battle.
Nicola Sturgeon has gone and labor now accepts our arguments.
Badenoch calls for fight against socialism and identity politics
Badenoch says she has been fighting identity politics all her life. And she goes on:
Like the 1970s we face a battle of ideas against the left and its desire for ever greater social and economic control.
It is socialism returned socialism in a suit.
The British public knows that socialism doesn’t work. They know.
But you can give it a new label. You can sneak it in. You can promote class warfare under the banner of equality.
You can take freedom and choice away from families by telling them that Ofsted inspection reports are unfair.
If you call communism, environmentalism, you can close down businesses, block the roads and stop people going to work.
This new politics has made us afraid, afraid to defend the people who need us, like young Conservatives. They tell me they are afraid to share their politics with other students, because they will be attacked that they are marked down by lecturers because of their beliefs. We have let young Conservatives down.
Badenoch says the last government did not defend capitalism.
Capitalism does not mean corporatism. It does not mean monopolies. It means free markets and competition.
We didn’t always protect those principles.
Like Labour, we raised taxes on business, corporation tax, capital gains tax, we tax dividends, and we regulated like labour.
Badenoch attacks Tory government’s record on net zero targets
Badenoch says the Tories stopped acting like Conservatives.
Net zero is a good example, she says.
We set a target with no plan on how to meet it, just so politicians could say we were the first country to do so. Now we have a net zero strategy addicted to state subsidy, making energy more expensive and hurting our economy. I am not a climate change sceptic, but I am a net zero sceptic.
Badenoch says she is Conservative because she knows what it’s like living in country without security and freedom
Badenoch recalls growing up in Nigeria.
I was born here, but I grew up in a place where fear was everywhere.
You cannot understand it unless you’ve lived it, triple checking that all the doors and windows are locked, waking up in the night at every sound, listening as you hear your neighbors scream as they are being burgled and beaten, and wondering if your home will be next.
When you’ve experienced that kind of fear, you’re not worried about being attacked on Twitter.
You appreciate how rare and precious it is to live in a country with security, democracy, equality under the law and above all else, freedom – free speech, free enterprise, free markets, conservative freedoms, conservative principles.
I am not a Conservative because I study politics at university. I’m an engineer. I am not a Conservative because my family always voted Conservative. I am a Conservative because I have seen what happens when a country loses sight of those principles, and that must not happen here.
Badenoch says the party has to get the diagnosis right.
It is not enough just to be in government, because you can be in government and not have power without a plan to fix the system, you end up just announcing policies, doing media and waiting for something to happen, and then you run into trouble, as this Labour government are quickly finding out …
Our country needs us. We must not let it down for this to work, we need to go back to first principles.
She recalls her father, who was a GP.
He also taught me responsibility.
He would say 80% of what happens to you is down to you. He was right.
And as a GP, he taught me how to solve problems. He would say, if you get the diagnosis wrong, the treatment won’t work.
I miss my dad. He taught me the most important lesson of all, never be afraid to do the right thing. No matter what people say about you, just do the right thing. My father taught me not to be afraid.
Kemi Badenoch tells Tories ‘the system is broken’ and ‘it’s time to tell the truth’
The Kemi Badenoch video stresses how disillusioned people are with politics generally.
She is on stage now, and she starts:
It is time to tell the truth, the truth about our party, the truth about our politics, the truth about our future.
For too long, politicians have been scared of the truth. For too long, politicians have hidden behind spin.
For too long, politicians have been scared of the truth for too long.
Politicians have hidden behind spin for too long. Politicians have told the public what they wanted to hear and then done their own thing.
Well, I say enough.
Badenoch says she addressed the Tory conference seven years ago (when she introdued Theresa May before her conference speech). She goes on:
But I am no longer a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed back bencher.
I am a veteran of four government departments and a former cabinet minister.
I have seen the system from the inside. Ladies and gentlemen, the system is broken.
Jenrick ends by saying he wants to lead change.
Come with me, join me, work with me in this new Conservative party and together, let’s take a stand for the country that we love.
Jenrick says he will stand up for British culture.
Well, how have we come to the point where a teacher from Batley remains in hiding because in a class on free speech of all things, they showed a cartoon of Muhammad.
How have we come to the point on our watch in which the NHS has facilitated thousands of children to have life changing, life altering surgery.
How have we come to the point where the RAF the Royal Air Force has chosen pilots on the basis of race and gender?
Well, I say our new Conservative party. We will be tolerant, but we will stand for never tolerating any of this, ever again.
Jenrick says he would cut foreign aid, to fund raising defence spending to 3% of GDP.
Jenrick calls for public sector reform, and a smaller state.
We will also take a stand for a small state that actually works, not a big state that fails …
We need to do for all our public services, what we did for schools in the 2010s empower the good leaders, kick out the bad ones, be relentless in driving up standards and having zero tolerance for failure, that must be at the core of our mission as a party.
Jenrick says the Tories must champion more housebuilding.
Our country needs more homes. We need more industry and infrastructure.
So I have a hard message for all of us today, if we want to be the party of low tax, of growth of business – as I do, and I know you do too – we also need to be the party of fixing the broken system that stops us building the homes, the factories, the data centers, the roads, the trams, the trains the investment that Britain desperately needs.
Jenrick says he’s opposed to interim net zero targets
Jenrick says the Tories must “take a stand on net zero”.
He says he does not oppose the principle of net zero, but he does oppose “the crazy interim binding targets put into law by Gordon Brown”.
