Conservative Party Conference | Tories: Back to Thatcherism

Party leader Kemi Badenoch remains optimistic despite the Tories' crisis. Photo: Imago/News Licensing When Kemi Badenoch steps up to the lectern at the Tories' party conference in Birmingham shortly before noon on Wednesday to give her final speech, the otherwise confident leader of the Conservative Party appears surprisingly tense. Maybe it's because so many seats have often remained empty in recent days that guest star Jeremy Clarkson (The Grand Tour, Clarkson's Farm) joked during his surprise appearance on Monday that many visitors appeared to be dressed up as seats. Now the hall is full to the brim. The delegates greet the party leader with a standing ovation.

Badenoch gets straight to the point: "British politics is facing a battle the likes of which has not been seen in this country for more than half a century," she says with a particularly calm tone when the applause has died down. A “contest for the soul of the nation” is imminent, a “contest of ideas” that will essentially be about “what kind of country we want to be.”

The mood at this year's party conference was significantly different from the event a year ago. At that time, right-wing populist Nigel Farage's Reform UK party was clearly ahead in all polls. A number of prominent Tory politicians defected to the right-wing populists, including several former MPs. And more and more traditional Tory voters also turned to the Farage party. Many British media outlets were already treating Farage like a prime minister-in-waiting. Reform UK threatened to completely replace the badly ailing Tories as the right-of-centre people's party.

But for several months now, several funding and donation scandals have overshadowed both Farage and his party. Reform UK's high is over, perhaps permanently. The Labor Party has made significant gains in polls under its new party leader and Prime Minister Andy Burnham and is currently at 27 percent according to a YouGov survey. And the Tories would also get almost as many votes as Reform UK, currently at 20 percent.

Badenoch's decision a few months ago to focus more on classic Tory issues such as tax cuts and deregulation, instead of trying to lure back renegade voters with culture war issues, may have contributed to the upswing. A few days ago the party presented the policy document “The Right Way”. It is a conscious reference to the fundamental declaration “The Right Approach” published in 1976, with which Margaret Thatcher set the course for her radical reform course from 1979 onwards. In terms of content, the reference to Thatcher could hardly be clearer: the central motives are a reduction in the size of the state, more internal security, higher defense spending and tax cuts. In addition, there is a move away from Net Zero plans for climate neutrality by 2050 (popular with conservative voters).

The document's classic, conservative themes clearly set the tone in Badenoch's final speech. Badenoch wants to address the overload of British prisons by creating 50,000 new prison places. Badenoch explained that national debt is the root of all problems and must therefore be reduced. The long-planned third runway for Heathrow Airport should finally be built and the planning and tax bureaucracy reduced. Badenoch also wants to boost oil and gas production in the North Sea again and reduce social benefits. Defense spending is to be increased to three percent of gross domestic product by 2030. This will also be used to pay for a new missile defense system called Britannia Shield. The delegates acknowledged this announcement with thunderous applause.

Badenoch makes her main announcement at the very end: family homes should be completely exempt from inheritance tax. Couples should be able to pass on an additional million pounds tax-free. These changes are to be financed through savings of 70 billion pounds, which the party claims to have identified.

After the speech, critics objected that Badenoch's announced plans favored higher earners and the wealthy. Tax Justice UK said: 'Kemi Badenoch has just announced a huge inheritance tax giveaway for some of Britain's richest people. This is an irresponsible policy that deprives public services of money just when they need it most." The general secretary of the trade union confederation TUC, Paul Nowak, said: "This tax only applies to the very largest inheritances - 95 percent pay no inheritance tax at all." Lowering it would do nothing for normal people, he added.

Although Badenoch's return to Thatcherism appears to be partly helping to bring back traditional Tory voters, a Conservative victory remains a long way off. Polls show Badenoch has the best personal ratings of a Tory leader in years and is clearly more popular than her party. But only just under a third of those who think their job is good would also vote conservative.

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