Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to announce ‘totemic’ tax cut in conference speech – live updates

Kemi Badenoch was pictured arriving at the Conservative Party conference alongside her husband Hamish this morning in Manchester.

The Tory leader will close out the conference following her keynote address which will focus on how the Conservatives plan to boost the economy.

The speech is expected to start at around 11:15am.

Kemi Badenoch is expected use her conference speech to announce a multibillion package of tax cuts as she seeks to revive her political fortunes.

The Conservative leader is expected to announce a ‘totemic’ tax cut in her conference speech as she argues that taxes are ‘stifling’ the economy. A 2p cut in income tax would cost about £12 billion.

The Tories have committed to £49 billion worth of savings, including huge cuts to the welfare budget and foreign aid spending.

She has said that at least half of the savings will be spent on paying down the deficit, leaving about £20 billion for tax cuts.

The Tories have already committed about £9 billion of that to tax cuts such as scrapping business rates for high street shops and a tax rebate for young people.

In opposition, she was accused of having ‘a desire for confrontation’ and ‘ceaseless and hectoring interruptions’.

Civil servants ‘treated her with scarcely veiled contempt’. Labelled ‘shrill’ and ‘strident’ – insults rarely applied to male politicians – the leader of the Conservatives faced palpable ‘rudeness’ and hostility, even from within her own party. She was ‘on a short fuse for much of the time’, complained one of her advisers, and ‘only partly because of the enormous pressures of the job’.

This stream of disobliging quotations is taken from Not For Turning, Robin Harris’s landmark 2013 biography of Margaret Thatcher.

But they will be all too familiar to Kemi Badenoch, who has faced her own deluge of criticism as she undertakes what is easily the worst job in British politics: Leader of the Opposition.

Read the full comment piece by Andrew Roberts here:

Kemi Badenoch has ‘all the time she needs’ to turn around the Conservative Party’s poor poll ratings, its chairman said today.

Kevin Hollinrake (pictured) told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

As far as I’m concerned, she’s got all the time she needs. I don’t think it will take years to change the poll ratings.

He said Mrs Badenoch would ‘absolutely’ be giving the leader’s speech at next year’s party conference.

When asked about 20 councillors defecting from Conservative to Reform during the party conference, he added:

Some people run for the hills when times are tough. I have no time for that kind of stuff. I have no time for people who haven’t got the stomach for a fight. (They’ve) run for elections under a Conservative ticket with Conservative support. I think it’s completely wrong when you show that disloyalty.

Robert Jenrick is still ‘engaging in a leadership campaign’, Sir Keir Starmer has claimed after the Tory complained he ‘didn’t see another white face’ during a visit to Birmingham earlier this year.

The Prime Minister said the Government needed ‘no lessons’ on integration from the shadow justice secretary, after the claims he made during a 90-minute visit to Handsworth came to light.

In an audio recording obtained by the Guardian, Mr Jenrick can be heard to make the remarks before adding: ‘That’s not the kind of country I want to live in.’

His claims have drawn widespread condemnation, including from the Tory former mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, and the Bishop of Birmingham.

Mr Jenrick has defended his comments, saying he ‘won’t shy away’ from issues of integration.

Asked about the Conservative frontbencher’s claims as he travelled to Mumbai, Sir Keir told journalists:

It’s quite hard to take anything that Robert Jenrick says seriously, he’s clearly still running his leadership campaign. I think that what Andy Street said was right. Andy Street obviously was mayor for a long time and knows the area very, very well.

We’re working hard on questions of integration, but we need no lessons or lectures from Robert Jenrick on any of this. He’s clearly just engaging in a leadership campaign.

Kemi Badenoch clashed with a TV interviewer tonight over the amount of questions she was being asked about Nigel Farage.

Conservative leader Ms Badenoch said she was ‘not interested’ in talking about her Reform counterpart and wanted to discuss the Tories, in a blunt response to Sky News.

She refused to give an answer when asked if she admired Mr Farage, a question interviewer Beth Rigby also put to Sir Keir Starmer last week.

Ms Badenoch told Sky it was odd she was not being asked if she also admired Sir Keir or Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey.

‘You tell me that people aren’t interested in me. I’m on your show,’ she told Ms Rigby.

‘Ask me about what I think. You spent most of the interview asking about Reform. Reforms already had their conference, Beth…’

When the journalist intervened to ask if the question made her ‘cross …. you seem irritated’, Ms Badenoch replied: ‘No, it isn’t. I just think that your viewers want to know what I am offering. I’m not offering Nigel. I’m offering authentic Conservatism.’

• Watch the interview below:

Shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride announced plans this week to slash government spending by £47 billion by clamping down on welfare, reducing the size of the civil service by a quarter and cutting billions from foreign aid.

The Conservatives have also set out proposals to scrap business rates for 250,000 pubs and high street shops at a cost of £4 billion.

A further £2.8 billion has been allocated to fund a new ‘first job bonus’ which would offer young people entering the workplace up to £5,000 towards their first home.

Kemi Badenoch will also pledge to curb funding for ‘low quality’ degree courses and use the proceeds to double the number of apprenticeships.

She will warn that too many courses are drawing students into a ‘debt trap’ in which they will never earn enough to pay back their tuition fees.

In her keynote speech today, Ms Badenoch will say the Conservative approach ‘starts with fiscal responsibility’, adding the party must tackle Britain’s deficit.

We have to get the deficit down. Over the next decade, Rachel Reeves is going to double the deficit with her borrowing and tax doom loop.

It’s not sustainable and it’s not fair. It is stealing from our children and grandchildren. And Conservatives will put a stop to it.

Shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride announced plans this week to slash government spending by £47 billion by clamping down on welfare, reducing the size of the civil service by a quarter and cutting billions from foreign aid.

Mrs Badenoch will today commit to using at least half the money saved to reduce the deficit, with the rest spent on cutting tax or boosting the economy.

Pledging a new ‘golden economic rule’, Ms Badenoch will say:

Every pound we save will be put to work. At least half will go towards cutting the deficit. Because living within our means is our first priority. With the rest, we are going to get our economy growing again. And bring down the taxes stifling our economy.

by Jason Groves, Daily Mail Political Editor

Kemi Badenoch is planning up to £25 billion in tax cuts as she puts the economy at the heart of her push for a Tory revival.

The Conservative leader will pledge to ‘bring down the taxes stifling our economy’ and reverse Labour’s ‘borrowing and tax doom loop’.

She will unveil plans for a new ‘golden rule’ which will require half of every pound saved to be used for cutting the deficit, with the other half spent on tax cuts and boosting the economy.

The Conservatives’ annual conference in Manchester has focused heavily on new policies to curb illegal immigration, including pledges to quit the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and deport 750,000 people with no right to be in this country.

The moves are designed to show voters that the Tories are willing to match Nigel Farage’s tough stance on immigration, which has seen Reform soar in the polls.

But Tory strategists believe the party’s best hope for recovery lies in trying to restore its battered economic credentials.

Hello and welcome to the Daily Mail’s live coverage of Kemi Badenoch’s leader’s speech at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.

Ms Badenoch will close the conference following her keynote address which will place the economy at the heart of her plans to breathe new life into the party.

Support for the Tories has drained in the polls with voters increasingly turning to Nigel Farage’s Reform.

Ms Badenoch will today pledge to ‘bring down the taxes stifling our economy’ and reverse Labour’s ‘borrowing and tax doom loop’.

Stick with us throughout the day as we bring you the latest from the Conservative party conference with our team of political journalists and Jamie Bullen reporting from London.