Kemi Badenoch speech latest: Conservative leader to promise tax cuts in ‘battle for the soul of the nation’

Something will break without better growth, Badenoch to predict

Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch is set to warn in her conference speech that “something is going to break” without better growth as she accuses Andy Burnham’s Labour of wanting to “wind back the clock to failed ideas of the past”.

The Tories have put the economy top of their agenda at their party conference in Birmingham, focusing less on the so-called “culture wars” that dominated previous years.

Mrs Badenoch will accuse Labour of believing “growth is created by politicians” and presiding over a “tax doom loop that is making us all poorer”.

Jane Dalton7 October 2026 07:10

Fight is coming in British politics, Badenoch to warn

A fight is coming in British politics, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is set to warn, in her leader’s speech at the end of the party conference.

She is set to say it will be “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.”

She will pitch the Tories, who are behind Labour and narrowly trailing Reform UK in opinion polls, as the party “fighting again for the belief that what people earn belongs to them, not government.”