Badenoch Opens the Tory Conference With a Statement of First Principles
Kemi Badenoch opened the Conservative conference in Birmingham with The Right Way, a 100-page statement of principles that deliberately echoes Margaret Thatcher’s 1976 The Right Approach. Its central claim is that “business, not government, creates growth”. Calling herself a “classic old school Conservative”, she told the hall: “I don’t want lots of little ghettos of separatist communities where they are recreating the place they come from.”
The essay concedes that the last Conservative government “did little to reverse the structural changes Labour had made” and that “the state grew by stealth”. It promises tax cuts, less red tape and a civil service shrunk to pre-pandemic size. The party still trails Labour and Reform UK; one Tory MP put it bluntly: “The mood is better but the facts are still very poor.” Bridget Phillipson, the Labour chair, said the Tories were “stuck in the past”. The shadow chancellor, Andrew Griffith, speaks on Monday.