True blue Badenoch takes the battle to Burnham

“Kemi! Kemi! Kemi!” The chant that resounded around the hall in Birmingham after the Tory leader’s conference speech was a clear sign of a party that is rediscovering its self-confidence and that is fully behind its leader.

And no wonder. Kemi Badenoch’s address was as true blue as it gets, exactly what its audience wanted to hear. The policies announced were distinctively Tory. The delivery was fantastic: at times quietly calm, at times accompanied by a wry twist of the mouth and an arched eyebrow, occasionally exploding into genuine anger. There were some good jokes and withering asides. And there was an unmistakable determination to take the country in a very different direction from the one being pursued by Andy Burnham’s Labour.

In a sense, Burnham has opened up this opportunity for the Opposition. His belief in a return to big-statism and higher spending, and the prospect of rising taxes, has given the Conservatives a clear and obvious target. There is once again a furious ideological battle between left and right. As Badenoch said, “there is a fight coming in British politics – a fight that we have not seen in this country for half a century. A battle for the soul of the nation, a battle of ideas, a battle that goes to the core of who we are and what kind of country we want to be.”

Burnham, currently in his imperial phase, barely mentioned the other parties in his speech to Labour conference last week. Badenoch gave them all a good kicking. Labour offered only a return to high taxes, an ever-growing welfare state and a return to the politics of the 1970s, she said. Perhaps most powerful was her denunciation of Reform. “We have had an export boom of drama queens going to Reform,” she joked, before taking aim at the various scandals surrounding the party’s politicians, from Nigel Farage down. “To those who say ‘unite the right’, we are not uniting with that. They are not like us. We are not like them.” A long standing ovation (one of many) followed.

Unlike Burnham, Badenoch is not a vibes politician. She is a serious-minded straight talker. In the days leading up to her speech she published a 100-page pamphlet outlining her vision for the country, entitled “The Right Way”. This was a deliberate reference to “The Right Approach”, published in 1976 and which set out the principles that became Thatcherism. Those two leaders share a similar inner toughness and impermeable self-confidence in their own worldview.

Perhaps Badenoch is counting on there being a 1979-style “Thatcher moment” on the horizon. She argued that, given the eye-watering level of national debt, “Britain is running out of money and running out of time. Unless we start growing our economy something is growing to break.” Labour had trapped the UK in a “tax doom loop that is making us all poorer”.

The Tory leader committed to drilling in the North Sea and introducing modular nuclear reactors, which along with the ongoing development of renewables would “drive down energy prices”. She would scrap every “job-killing measure in Labour’s Employments Rights act” and cut employers’ National Insurance in half so that it would be easier for young people to find a job.

She promised “tough love” on welfare – “we need to put the ‘fare’ back in welfare” – and to use the money saved for defence, including a “Britannia Shield” equivalent of Israel’s Iron Dome. Homes would be excluded from inheritance tax – this perhaps drew the loudest cheer of the speech – and couples would be allowed to leave an additional £1m tax-free. Stamp duty would be abolished.

Kemi versus Andy is measuring up to be not just a fight for the soul of the country, but a political battle for the ages. Grab some popcorn and strap yourself in for the ride.

by Chris Deerin, Senior Adviser