REACTION: Kemi’s conference speech – has she found ‘the right way’?

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0:38Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Oscar Brinson. I'm joined today by James Heal, Lara Brown and Tim Shipman in the hotel lobby. We've all been listening on to Kemi Baden-Ock's speech, bringing to a close Conservative Party conference 2026. Let's hear a little clip so you can get a flavour of what she was saying. There is a fight coming in British politics. A fight that we have not seen in this country for more than half a century. It will be a battle for the soul of this nation. A battle of ideas. A battle that goes to the very core of who we are and what kind of country we want to be.

1:23Tim, I'll come to you first. Was Kemi policy-maxing? Policy maxing, yes. Our editor, Mr Gove, has been on the television saying that she is peng because she's policy maxing. I'm not the first clue what either of those things means, but I bow down to his greater knowledge of the local Argo. Look, I think this was almost the inverse of Andy Burnham's speech, which was brilliantly delivered and containing fairly horrendous content. This was a very good speech content-wise, though the delivery was a little bit flat and plodding, And there were lots of places where she paused for applause and it wasn't necessarily forthcoming with the waves of glee that she had hoped.

2:02But I think most people left the room thinking this is a politician who knows what she thinks. She's unabashed about proper Tory values. I was speaking to someone at our party last night who has been watching the Conservative Party get itself in a mess for a decade. He said most conservative statements about everything now are conservative again. And they sort of are what you would expect from a conservative spokesman. So I think what she's done is set out what the party stands for, which is that it stands for sound money. It stands for making people make the decisions about their own lives rather than having an overbearing state make them for them.

2:36It understands that people's money is their own and is gifted to the government to use wisely rather than that growth and money all comes from the government. And we should be jolly grateful indeed if they deign to give us any of it back. And I think that's a strong argument with the people that she's trying to win over. And as I write in my column this week, the basic plan is big up the economy. You win back a lot of those voters who are a were disillusioned with the Conservative Party. But look at Andy Burnham and think, oh, dear, that's a bit socialist. And look at reform and think, I don't like the smell of that.

3:07And she was pretty tough where Burnham didn't mention his rivals at all. She was pretty tough on Burnham and his desire to get back to 1970s tax and spend economics. and she was pretty rude about reform and all this ethno-nationalist stuff that they're doing at the moment. And bluntly, the debate for a long time on the right has been which party would end up propping up the other. I don't think either of these party leaderships was anything to do with each other. She basically said, unite the right, we don't want to unite with that. So from that point of view, it was quite a punchy speech and we had to wait a long time for the new stuff.

3:40But the policies that she announced on inheritance tax basically said, I'd love to scrap it, but we're going to have to fund everything that we agree to scrap. So instead, we will be exempting everybody's family home from inheritance tax. I believe the people who work hard and save should be rewarded for that effort. So conference, this is my guarantee. 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. That is what the next Conservative government will deliver. And we will be letting couples hand over another million pounds to their children.

4:22And that will be a very popular policy in the south of England, which is where those sort of Lib Dem Blairite voters who abandon the Conservative Party, she's hoping to win back. And the theory is if we can win some of those back, get ahead of reform, then some of the reform vote will break Tory anyway, because they will want to support the major party on the right. And if that becomes the Conservative Party, they see the way back into prominence and relevance in British politics. Yeah, James, I mean, we very nearly almost got the inheritance tax announcement that we thought we were going to get.

4:51Ended up getting something which was, I'm struggling not to say, watered down. Do you think she'll come under some criticism for that? Well, that's certainly how reformer already got a brief at us as she bottled it. Look, she said in a speech that I can't give you everything you want to the members, but I can give you some what you want with a sort of treasure cat grin. Yeah, I mean, overall, I think that it's going to be something that reform will seize on. I think overall, my sense is from the speech is everyone's got what they wanted in terms of clear blue ideological water. Labour can say, ah, look, the Tories are going back to being the party of the rich.

5:18Reform will echo that in saying it's about Belgravia versus Woking Man. Biliriki. Or some such thing. All the little phrases. Biliriki, there you go. Tim's, as usual, got the better lines. And the Conservatives can say they've finally got back to what they want to. My point of scepticism would be, and I've noticed this across the conference, there is only one event about winning back in the north. There is no real effort to win back the voters they won in 17 or 19. And there is an element, maybe for the future, maybe for future conferences, of are the Tories simply in their safe space saying what they want to hear?

5:47Maybe that's enough in a fragmented landscape for 25%. It's not the kind of 40%, 42 % that Theresa May or Boris Johnson were getting back in those days. But yeah, I mean, it'll be something the Conservative press very much enjoys. And I always remember the kind of cynical words of Charlie Whelan in the 1997 campaign where he's talking, he's caught on camera talking, I think, to one of the STV documentaries about the Treasury. and he said, oh, yes, all the journalists want to know. And journalists want to know all about the top rate of income tax because they want to know how much the editors are going to have to pay.

6:12And I suspect very much there'll be Fleet Street editors hailing this tonight and celebrating in their front pages tomorrow. Lara, we were watching this together, and one of the things that we were talking about was that quite a lot of this was reheated from last year's conference speech. Is it the same old tricks? It's definitely similar tricks. I would argue that she's not really policy-maxing, as I would say. She's sort of reminding people maxing. I think she's conscious that the Tories have spent the last year in a media black hole at times. And she wants to reiterate what she regards as good ideas and good policies that were announced in Manchester last year have been announced in the last few months.

6:48A big example of that would be the very proud announcement of the golden rule. That's the Tories' plans to find savings over the next few years and then commit to spending half of those savings on bringing down the national debt. And they've got about 70 billion savings so far on paper. she also went back through Helen Waitley's latest tranche of announcements re-welfare in young people which basically sees young people facing more barriers to accessing benefits and facing different um accessing different benefits to universal credit to try and force them into work but that is understandable because those announcements won't have cut through and a recognition from the conservatives in opposition you need to go over things repeatedly is probably very valuable so yeah there was there was one new policy it was about an hour in but to a lot of the media maybe these policies seem new the BBC are reporting the the golden rule like it is a new policy interestingly last time I checked I think I think this is very true of Laura's saying and actually some minister was complaining it's like no no we're very congested media and political landscape it's on you incumbent you know you may have the world's greatest policy but you don't go and sell it that's on you I would say the other thing of course about it's not just policies about the attention economy and the Tories have certainly stepped on their game so before the speech we had Kevin Hollenrake the party chairman step out and mention the Labour minister Jenny riddled Carpenter's comments at the conference about this far-right fantasy of black Labrador's and pints and he did sip from a pint of ale at 10am and bring out his dog Zuzu who I think was the only person who could rival Kempe Bainock for orgastic applause from the conference faithful.

8:15I mean I don't know if Zuzu is eligible to stand for the next leader but she did a very good performance as well. It's worth saying that I think one of the Tories big frustrations over the last six months is there have been a few instances where they technically got there first before reform but because they were so quiet about it and didn't repeat themselves reform got all the credit um the big example of this i think is they're very similar policies on social housing and being foreign born which was in the conservative conference package last year but almost everyone thinks came from reform first a couple of months ago and they obviously don't want to repeat that mistake again so they're going to keep reminding us of what is currently on the table and that will be a theme i imagine going forward i think it's quite interesting this whole battle on the right thing i think today's the day kemi may not really want to put a nail in the coffin of reform and I will be interested to see if the polling moves and I'll be interested to see if, you know, after May, if we're still in this current position and reform narrowly are still ahead of the Conservatives after a third successive local election defeat, we'll see at that point if there's maybe a kind of strategy re-evaluation.

9:09But I think this was her big push. There's obviously the news today that reform's internal investigation has cleared two of the top aides of the party. This all could come to the head and also there's also potentially the Parliamentary Commission for Standards Report we expect is going to be in the next couple of weeks because the interviews with Mr Farage and the people involved in these reports tend to be at the end of the investigation. So this could be an issue about prohibiting standards. But I think, I'm not sure if these people will vote for her necessarily, but I was really struck on people like Blue Sky, etc., who are absolutely lauding Kim and Bainock's passage on reform.

9:39And I suspect that will get clicked up and I suspect it will make the Tory feel good about themselves. Whether actually it will attract people back, I think remains to be seen. And Tim, we are now at the end of Conservative Party Conference 2026, so we can afford to be a bit reflective. All of them, the whole conference season. And the whole conference season. As the former Prime Minister said, rejoice. Just rejoice at that news. And congratulate our brave Spectator writers on a conference well done. Poor SMP being left out here. That's still to come. I can't make it six. I've had my famous five.

10:10Mark can't make it six. We're done. We're checked out. But Tim, we can afford to be slightly reflective. Do you think Kemi Badenok has got out of this conference what she wanted, what she set out to get? I mean, look, I think we're in a state of flux in British politics at the moment. I think the budget will help clarify some of it. Burnham's had a bit of a bounce out of his conference. It'll be interesting to see if Badenot gets a bit of a bounce out of hers. I think what she said about reform and what she said about the economy will register with a lot of those sort of southern better off voters who she's currently targeting.

10:43I think James is right. I think it is a dangerous game to not say we're going to try and reconstruct the Boris coalition and do more to win over those people who've defected to reform. But she basically she did pitch at the reform voter as well. She said, you deserve better than these guys. These guys are not good enough for you. They are a bit dodgy and they're saying all this dubious stuff about race and we don't need that. I think that the overall message about the race stuff and reform being sort of toxic, as she would put it, is directed not at those voters. But she did sort of say, we want you to come back.

11:23But their strategy is very clearly not to try and get them back directly. It is to sort of persuade them that the Tories have momentum for having picked up votes elsewhere and that reform are busted flush. They've lost the momentum and they're going to go backwards. Now, that isn't happening yet. You know, reform are lower than they were a year ago, but they've been very solidly in the low to mid 20s for four months now. And, you know, that is lower than Farage's peak. And the tonal sort of stuff that reform are doing has capped their ability to get back to 30 percent. And a lot of those sort of right leaning voters who were thinking we've got to stop the socialists getting into government.

12:01I think, you know, six to nine months, 12 months ago, we're looking at reform and thinking, well, if they can come out of this looking pragmatic and like a government in waiting, then I might be prepared to vote for them. The game is almost now in reverse, but we don't know the answer. You know, the first polls will be in by the weekend to see whether there's much of a Tory bounce. but you know as I've written in my column this is was a very upbeat conference but the fundamentals are still pretty tricky for the Conservative Party if last year was a lot of people very depressed and sucking deeply on the crack pipe of copium this year they are sucking deeply on the crack pipe of hopium and hopium is a wonderful thing it makes you happy in the short term but there can often be a bit of a come down from your from your hopium um but what does kemi baynock say hope is not a policy hope is not a policy she said and um you know i've used that in my uh use that in the column i've written i mean she's right you know it's it's necessary but not sufficient hope can be the thing that ends up killing you if you're not careful i would sum up the five party conferences i've been to in five words so labour was hope today was nope i'd say the libden's was dope reform the rope and Greens cope so look I think that proper politics is back and I cannot wait for that I think there's almost this relief from both the Conservatives and Labour side after these few years of a dying Sunak government and Keir Starmer quite technocratic we've now got proper blue water and I think next week is going to be the end of the holiday from reality as a great man once said we're going to finally go back at the end of this party conference season when everyone gets to talk to themselves and talk to the nation we're going to have a series of big blockbuster moments the budget 10-year plan.

13:41We're going to have the Milburn Review. We're going to have things like the Veterans Bill. What does it mean about Al Kahn's, et cetera? And I think that's going to be interesting. And I think if you look at the last 12 months or so of British politics, reforms decline kind of starts around this time. They had the whole things around Dulwich College in like November. So that's almost 12 months ago. Let's see where we are in 12 months. It's going to be a very exciting time in British politics. And the other advantage the Conservatives have in that is, of course, is they have a much bigger presence in the House of Commons.

14:03So if the row becomes about stuff the government is doing, the Tories are in a much better position to be the dominant voice against it. What Farage and reform have been very good periodically at doing is setting their own agenda and making everybody else chase it. There is a good chance that from now until Christmas, the agenda will be set by Labour, with the Tories having a principled argument against it, and they will begin to look like the two main forces in the political conversation. And Farage has got to think carefully about how he tries to divert public attention from that. The risk for reform is that the way it gets diverted is a standards inquiry, yet another by-election in Clacton, and that does further damage to his brand.

14:47So it's, you know, nicely poised. And the agenda is likely to be economic and defence, I think. We've got the budget coming up, as you've written, Tim. Healy is sort of dragging himself with dread into that budget. You've got an increasingly dangerous world. and I think that's why the Tories do seem quite optimistic because they know that they poll much better on reform, on economics and defence. They can talk to those issues. They've got people talking about defence. I think reform hasn't got a spokesperson. It does feel like the time where reform could do with a defence spokesman, it has to be said.

15:19Farage keeps saying, well, we're waiting for one of these generals to come over and then they can have the job. My understanding is, I mean, that is coming, but I mean, I feel like I've said this several times. Well, we've both been told that on and off, that we're nearly there for a period of pushing nine months, I would say. Well, when that finally happens, Coffeehouse Shots listeners will be the first to know. Thank you so much, James. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Lara. We will, of course, be covering politics as it continues to get more exciting, including the Hoburn and St Pancras by-election.

15:49We'll be bringing you podcasts on Friday, giving you the latest, everything you need to know. But for this conference season, thank you so much for listening.

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