The Leader of the Opposition and the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, welcomed Conference in Manchester. Read her speech in full below 👇
Thank you.
Conservatives love Manchester. It is a great city of free trade and free thinking.
240 years ago, in the 1780s, this was still a small market town.
But something was stirring.
A spirit of enterprise that would turn Manchester into a global economic powerhouse.
And it was back in the 1780s that the very first Jewish community was established in this city.
A small group of families, worshipping in a rented room in a back alley, just a short walk from where I am standing.
And right from the very start, Jewish people have been part of the fabric of Manchester.
Adding their distinct, unique contribution to this fantastic city, while at the same time embracing Britain as their home.
The horrific and despicable attack at Heaton Park Synagogue on Thursday has shocked us all.
But for many in the Jewish community, it did not come as a surprise.
Many have been living with a sense of rising dread that an attack like this was becoming inevitable.
Yesterday, I met members of the congregation and visited the site of the attack.
The strength of Manchester's Jewish community is humbling.
Targeting the centre of community life on the holiest day of the year, was not just an attack on British Jews, it was an attack on all of us.
It was an attack on our humanity and our values of freedom, compassion, and respect.
It was an attack on the idea that Britain is a safe place for Jews.
On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Jews take time for introspection. To ask themselves - where have we gone wrong in the past, and what do we need to do, to be better in the future?
These are questions we urgently need to ask ourselves as a nation.
Extremism has gone unchecked.
We see it manifest in the shameful behaviour on the streets of our cities. Protests which are in fact carnivals of hatred directed at the Jewish homeland.
You hear it in the asinine slogans.
You hear it in ‘From the river to the sea’ – as if the homes, the lives, of millions of Jewish people should be erased.
You hear it in ‘Globalise the intifada’ – which means nothing at all, if it doesn’t mean, targeting Jewish people for violence.
We have tolerated this in our country for too long.
And we have tolerated the radical Islamist ideology that seeks to threaten not only Jews, but all of us, of all faiths and none, who want to live in peace.
So, the message from this conference, from this party, from every decent and right-thinking person in this country must be that we will not stand for it, anymore.
We cannot import and tolerate, values hostile to our own.
We must now draw a line and say that in Britain you can think what you like, and within the bounds of the law, you can say what you like but you have no right to turn our streets into theatres of intimidation. And we will not let you do so anymore.
To our Jewish friends, we stand with you shoulder to shoulder.
You are part of the fabric of Britain, and you always will be.
We pray for the recovery of the victims still in hospital.
And we mourn with you the loss of Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz.
May their memories be a blessing.
But we must never let terrorism defeat our democratic process. We must demonstrate that it is through political argument, not violence, that we reach our decisions and improve our country.
We all know the scale of the challenge we face, the mountain we have to climb.
Last year, the public sent us a clear message.
One we could not mistake and which we will never forget.
They want serious change.
For politics to be done differently so our country can get back on track.
That’s what I promised you when I stood for the leadership of our party.
A reset. Politics done differently. Politics done properly.
A Conservative Party under new leadership ready to earn the trust of the British people again.
In the last 12 months we’ve started doing politics in a new way.
No more making the announcement first and working out the policy detail second.
No more thinking we can leave quangos and bureaucrats to their own devices and then wonder why we don’t see results.
No more accepting that our laws can be used as a tool to subvert democratic decisions and basic common sense.
An end, once and for all, to the drift of our institutions away from truth, honesty and decency. And a return to the values that define our country at its best.
That’s what this week is all about.
But I didn’t say it would be easy, and I didn’t say it would be quick.
Nothing really worth doing is.
Anyone who tells you there are easy answers to the big questions our country faces is either lying to you or lying to themselves.
We are taking a new approach.
Credible plans rooted in Conservative values.
Hard though the task is, we have plenty of reasons to be cheerful.
Because as one of my great predecessors, Margaret Thatcher put it ‘the facts of life are Conservative.’
The facts of life are Conservative, Conference. The fact that countries, like families, have to live within their means.
The fact that individuals know better than governments how best to spend their own money.
The fact that freedom depends on order and only works under the rule of law.
There is a gap for the responsible, optimistic, competent Conservative approach.
An approach rooted in values.
Values like personal responsibility – as my dad often said to me: “only 20% of what happens to you is down to others. 80% is down to your actions and your choices”.
Like citizenship – a commitment to a country and the people in it.
Family – different shapes and sizes, the bedrock of social stability and the foundation of our society.
Freedom – freedom to think, to speak and to live as each of us chooses.
These are the values of British people.
They are crying out for a politics rooted in those values which puts their needs first.
Conference they are crying out for a Stronger Economy – where hard work is rewarded and everyone has a chance to get on.
For Stronger Borders – where we control who comes here and can remove those with no right to stay.
This is our political DNA as Conservatives.
Our job is to prove to the country that we are the only party that can deliver it.
Conference, post-war, Conservatives spread prosperity and built millions of new homes – the bedrock of the property-owning democracy.
In the 1980s, Mrs Thatcher broke the cycle of high inflation, low growth, and trade union strife, giving Britain back her national pride and economic strength.
Labour accuse us of achieving nothing in the 14 years since 2010.
I’ll tell you what we did.
Remember what we inherited from them back then.
They spent all the money, sold the gold, piled up debt.
Like every Labour government in history, they left unemployment higher than they found it.
We were elected to fix it and Conservatives got to work.
We slashed the deficit every year so that when the pandemic hit, we had the means to weather the storm.
We reformed our schools to put rigour back into the curriculum.
And today, a whole generation of young people will enter the world with better maths and literacy skills than any generation before them.
We reformed welfare.
We got people into work.
Four million new jobs were created.
Over a million new businesses
We gave the British people a choice on our membership of the EU, and we implemented that decision.
And what followed?
The fastest vaccine roll-out in the west.
Billions of pounds worth of trade deals.
No other party would have done these things.
But they were right for our country, and we can all be proud of them.
And Conference, we mustn’t forget that in each election from 2010 to 2019, our vote share went up.
That’s unprecedented in modern history.
And the British people don’t get it wrong.
But if we take pride in what we got right, we also have to face up to what we got wrong.
People won’t listen to us again until we show them, we have learnt from our mistakes and changed.
We’ve got to do this and do it properly.
What have we learned?
That you can’t have a budget that has £150 billion of spending giveaways and billions more in tax cuts without saying where the money is coming from.
We have to show that we have learnt from the policy mistake of letting bureaucrats decide the immigration system.
We failed to bring numbers down and stop the boats. Let’s be honest.
And that happened on our watch.
Yes, we tried but put simply, we didn’t achieve enough.
After years of responsible and effective government our mistakes on the economy and on immigration lost us the trust and confidence of the public.
So, we start this week saying we have learnt, and we will never repeat the financial irresponsibility of spending commitments without saying where the money is coming from.
Never again, Conference.
This week we will set out how we have changed, how we will be different – and, most importantly, how we will make a difference.
Economic responsibility is the hallmark of the Conservative approach and today it is right back at the heart of everything we stand for.
We may be in Manchester, but the theme of economic responsibility will run through this conference like the words in a stick of Blackpool rock.
You’ll be hearing a lot more about that this week
But there are two parts to our message at this conference: Stronger Economy, Stronger Borders.
And it’s stronger borders that I want to talk to you about today.
I was elected leader because I promised to renew this party and our policies,
So, we can win the next election and then rewire the state to make it work for people again.
We are not interested in superficial fixes.
Instead, we are taking a systemic approach.
Asking the difficult questions that others avoid.
We have the courage to follow through with credible plans to answer them.
It’s the rigorous, practical, Conservative way.
And on so many of those questions, the answers come back to the same thing.
Why is it that every time we try to build anything in this country, we have to spend millions of pounds on paperwork, and still get bogged down in litigation?
Why are protesters allowed to block roads and disrupt lives, time and time again?
Why are our veterans, relentlessly chased through the courts by activist lawyers?
Why couldn’t we deport those foreign nationals, who raped girls in communities across the UK?
Why do we still allow them to remain in the very same towns where their victims live? Why?
It is fundamental, why can’t we control our borders and remove those who need to go?
All these questions boil down to who should make the laws that govern the United Kingdom?
Conservatives, believe it should be our sovereign Parliament, accountable to the British people.
The reality today, is that this is simply not the case.
I saw it again and again in government.
So often, we had the right instincts and the right policies, but our hands were tied by a system that frustrated democratic control.
This use of litigation as a political weapon is what I call lawfare.
Well-meaning treaties and statutes – like the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Convention on Action against Trafficking drafted with the best of intentions in generations gone by, and more recent additions like the Modern Slavery Act, are now being used in ways never intended by their original authors.
What should be shields to protect the vulnerable, have instead become swords to attack democratic decisions and frustrate common sense.
Conference, this isn’t just damaging our security, it’s also damaging our prosperity.
It is that whole system which we need to reform.
And the place to start is the European Convention on Human Rights.
None of us has a problem with the rights in the original charter.
It was drafted in 1950 by British lawyers - Conservative lawyers - and it drew on British traditions.
The problems stem from how it has been enforced and how its meaning has been twisted and changed.
Today, it is used as a block on deportations, a weapon against veterans, and a barrier to sentencing and public order.
Labour pretend it can be fixed, but when a group of nine European countries, led by Italy, recently pushed for reforms at the court, the Labour government didn’t support them.
They wouldn’t even try.
Our human rights lawyer Prime Minister, and his good friend the Attorney General. An Attorney General who likened those of us questioning ECHR membership to Nazis will never fix this problem.
Instead, Conference they have gone in the opposite direction.
Paying to surrender British territory in the Chagos Islands,
And plotting to force everyone in this country to carry Starmer’s digital ID. Conference, we will fight them every step of the way.
Reform just shout that we should “leave” the ECHR without any plan to do so or understanding any of the consequences.
They are practicing that old, failed politics I talked about.
That politics of announcements without a plan.
That’s the way to chaos and failure.
It is only the Conservatives who are taking the honest, responsible approach, prepared with a plan to deliver.
To make sure we can strike at the root of the problem, we need to understand the full extent of the problem.
That’s why I identified five essential policies that the Government must be able to implement, if we are to secure our border and restore order to our society.
Five tests that a country has to pass to be truly sovereign.
First, can we deport foreign criminals and those who are here illegally?
Second, can we stop our veterans being harassed through the courts?
Third, can we put British citizens first for social housing and public services?
Fourth, can we make sure protests do not intimidate people or stop them living their lives?
And fifth, can we stop endless red tape and legal challenges choking off economic growth?
Any self-respecting sovereign nation should be able to answer all five of those questions with a clear, yes.
Anything that is stopping us from doing so is a barrier we have to remove.
So, I asked the Shadow Attorney General, the distinguished King’s Counsel Lord Wolfson, to lead an in-depth analysis.
The question I posed was whether these five tests can be lawfully met, as a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, bound by the court in Strasbourg.
I want to thank Lord Wolfson for his immense and detailed work. So forensic, so thorough.
In nearly 200 pages of legal advice, he has provided his answer.
This is what he said.
‘When it comes to control of our sovereign borders, preventing our military veterans from being pursued indefinitely, ensuring prison sentences are applied rigorously for serious crimes, stopping disruptive protests, or placing blanket restrictions on foreign nationals in terms of social housing and benefits, the only way such positions are feasible would be to leave the ECHR.’
And so to me and the shadow cabinet, the resulting policy decision is also clear.
We must leave the ECHR and repeal the Human Rights Act.
Conference, I want you to know that the next Conservative manifesto will contain our commitment to leave.
Leaving the Convention is a necessary step, but not enough on its own to achieve our goals.
If there are other treaties and laws, we need to revise or revisit then we will do so. And we will do so in the same calm and responsible way, working out the detail before we rush to announce.
The rights we enjoy did not come from the ECHR.
They were there for hundreds of years in our common law.
Parliament has legislated over centuries to reflect and protect our freedoms.
Human Rights in the United Kingdom did not start in 1998 with the Human Rights Act, and will not end with it.
As we work through our detailed plan, we are clear that leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act will not mean that we lose any of the rights we cherish.
But this is the only way to end spurious legal claims from immigrants with dubious stories and excuses.
This is the only way to allow a British Government, the next Conservative Government, to deliver a British BORDERS plan in full.
Conference, the Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, has done a brilliant job pulling together this BORDERS plan. The Conservatives are a strong team. And he will be saying more about this shortly, including our plans to remove 150,000 illegal immigrants a year.
Lord Wolfson has also advised that leaving the ECHR is fully compatible with the Belfast Agreement – the Good Friday Agreement.
But I know that there will be particular challenges in Northern Ireland.
The difficulties are not a reason to avoid action, they are a reason to work harder to get it right.
So, to ensure that this is an orderly and respectful process across the whole United Kingdom. I am asking Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Alex Burghart to lead a review into Union-wide implementation.
So, at the next election, we will present the people of the United Kingdom with a clear, thorough and robust plan.
Not the vague mush that we see day in, day out from Labour
Nor the vacuous posturing that we see day in day out from Reform.
Conference, you would have seen last week, both Labour and Reform shouting at one another, trading insults instead of solutions.
One flings around the word racist and will not be realistic about what is going wrong.
The other whips up outrage, offering simplistic answers that fall apart on first contact with reality.
That is not serious politics.
Conference, neither offers the leadership Britain deserves.
The truth is that Labour and Reform are two sides of the same coin.
Both deal in grievance.
Both divide our country into tribes and labels.
Both practice identity politics which will destroy our country.
I am saying no: no to division and no to identity politics.
Conference, what Britain needs is national unity.
I am black.
I am a woman.
I am a Conservative.
And I know that identity politics is a trap.
It reduces people to categories and then pits them against each other.
But I am more than black, female, and even Conservative.
I am British.
Conference, I am British, as we all are.
My children are British.
And I will not allow anyone on the Left to tell them they belong in a different category or anyone on the Right to tell them they do not belong in their own country.
Yes, Britain is a multiracial country.
That is part of our modern story.
But it must never become a multicultural country where shared values dissolve, loyalty fragments and we foment the home-grown terrorism we saw on the streets of Manchester this week.
Nations cannot survive on diversity alone.
We need a strong, common culture, rooted in our history, our language, our institutions, and our belief in liberty under the law.
That is what holds us together.
And that is why borders matter.
Why numbers matter.
But most of all why culture matters.
Who comes here, why they come, and how they contribute that is how we protect the inheritance that generations before us fought for and died for.
Conference, Britain needs deep change.
But I reject the politics that everything must go. Everything must be torn down. That everything is broken.
But if we leave it to Labour or Reform, Britain will be divided.
Only the Conservatives can bring this country back together.
This is a battle we must win.
By combining secure borders, with a shared culture, strong values, and the confidence of a great nation, we can win the debate, and win the next election.
Conference, this is a party under new leadership and with a renewed purpose.
We have listened, we have learned, and we have changed.
Only Conservatives will tell you the truth.
Take the difficult decisions.
Do the hard work.
Only Conservatives have the courage, the honesty, and the plan to strengthen our borders, restore our sovereignty, and rebuild our prosperity.
So, I say to you all, as we start our conference.
Yes, we have a mountain to climb but we have a song in our hearts.
And we are up for the fight.
Watch all the speeches from day 1 of Party Conference 👇:
