Inheritance tax axed! Kemi takes fight to Burnham with heartfelt speech

The Telegraph After Andy Burnham's socialist schmaltzfest, there was everything at stake as Kemi Badenoch addressed the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham and gave her punchiest, most personal speech yet. More prison places, lower inheritance tax and don't pick on my mixed race kids. This was Kemi's bid for the soul of Britain. I am optimistic because we have learned from our mistakes. We are going the right way. We are ready to fight for our values, ready to win the argument, ready to govern, ready to get Britain working again. Tim, we've just come out of the Symphony Hall and appropriately, I think Kemi Badenoch just sang all the right notes for this Tory crowd. OK. Well, first of all, let's just deal with the tone of it. Yeah. We have said, haven't we, repeatedly, that it's all very well coming out with Thatcherite rhetoric. You've got to have a heart and you've got to have a soul. And I had written a column actually last weekend saying, we need to hear more from you as a woman, as a mother, as a British Nigerian. And what I thought was interesting about the tone that she struck today, she was smiley, she was hopeful, but she was very personal about who she is and what she stands for. So we've had this whole debate. We've had this whole debate all week, haven't we, about ethno-nationalism. You've had a lot of stick on social media for merely pointing out that there is something to be proud of in a black woman leading the Conservative Party. And she massively lent into that. Let's just hear what she said about her race and, crucially, the race of her own children. I don't want to live in a country run by people who threaten journalists, who call veterans traitors and debate whether my mixed-race children are English. I don't want to explain to my. I don't want to explain to my son, when we're watching our brilliant England team play football, that some people don't think our black players are English. What we've just heard is in stark contrast to the tone at the beginning of the conference, which was about a document called The Right Way, in which she laid out her philosophical foundations for how she wants to govern. All very well and good. Lots of people would agree with what's in it. But as we had speech after speech, Andrew Griffith, very dull. Tom Tudenhatt, good, worthy, but none of this. None of this stuff really set the place on fire. Behind the scenes, people were saying, when is she going to show us her? Yes. And the reason for that is because Andy Burnham has thrown down the personal gauntlet. Yes. In his conference speech, he said, I'm doing what I do because it's personal. I want to. Remember he said, I want to build a Britain that my late father would be proud of. So we were saying to people at various parties, come on, let us see Cammy. Yes. We know with all these attacks upon her that there's got to be a part of her that wants to reply to them. And she's in two minds between she obviously wants to defend her family, but she also believes in a colorblind politics. She doesn't want individuals to be defined by their race. So the last thing she wants to do is come out and say, let's talk about my race. But there's a feeling that reform has made the subject unavoidable. And this is because Suella Braverman went on Question Time and said that, well, she identifies as British. She doesn't think she's English because her heritage is obviously Indian. And I think to be fair to Suella, that's because she was asked about it. Yes. And that is a view that many British people take, which is that there is a distinct English ethnicity and there is an umbrella British nationality. And indeed, you debated this with Jacob Bruce on Monday. It's angels on the head of a pin. But that's not the only element of what people are privately dubbing reforms Nigeria. And strategy. It's also about proxies on social media coming out and saying you can't trust the Tories to be tough on immigration because they are led by an immigrant. Yes. That's that's the very unsubtle coding that's going on. And it's not just the reform adjacent thing. It's a restore adjacent thing. Yeah. And so what she has done is directly responded to that, making it about her personally, but also a principle. That what differentiates conservatism from nationalism is we don't do race. Yes. And of course, it was a restatement of her pride in being British. Yes. And she has spoken. She's spoken her maiden speech 2017 about coming here from Nigeria, what that experience was like, what it was like growing up under a socialist government, couldn't get any water, had to go and fetch water from a borehole in rusty buckets, doing homework by candlelight. Listen, she wasn't as. Nostalgic as that. She wasn't doing a Burnham in sort of taking us through a journey of her childhood. No. And what I found interesting about her approach, Tim, is she was letting us know that she is both a compassionate conservative and a woman and a mother by referencing. And it was a very moving moment and actually brought a tear to quite a few eyes in the house when she talked about the victims of Valdo Calacane, the Nottingham killer, the victims of Axel Ruder Cabana, the Southport killer, and repeatedly referencing Henry Novak. Let's just have a listen to that moment. This year, I have been meeting the parents of those children who didn't come back home. The family of Henry Novak, 18 years old, handcuffed by the police in his dying moments as his murderer stood over him, accusing him of racism. The lack of common sense and compassion shown to Henry in his final moments was a shocking failure by the state. I met the parents of Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar. Grace's father, Sanjoy, is sitting here today. They're children. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Their children were butchered in Nottingham, along with Ian Coates, by a psychopath that authorities had multiple opportunities to stop, but didn't because they were afraid to. These are different kinds of failure. But in each case, institutions that were meant to protect people failed. It is devastating for families, and it keeps happening again and again and again. It's not just Henry. It's not just Grace or Barnaby. It's those little girls who were killed in Southport. It's the Manchester Arena bombing. When a child dies, a family is changed forever. Now, Grace O'Malley Kumar, who was one of Callaghan's victims, her father, Dr Sanjoy Kumar, who, along with Barnaby Webber's family and the family of Ian Coates, have campaigned relentlessly to get the state to accept its multiple failings. He was in the audience, and it was a moving moment because he, of course, quite understandably welled up and needed to wipe the tears from his eyes. So I just thought that let us know a little bit more about a woman who has largely kept her emotions under wraps, I think. And we've seen a very British display of compassion and sympathy in the last couple of weeks because neither Andy Burnham nor Kemi Badenock has broken down. Yes. You don't want a leader who cannot actually continue at the podium and has to be led away gently by someone. No. But you do want someone who can, in that very restrained English way, signal to the people at home, I'm not just saying this because I believe this will win votes. I'm saying this because this keeps me up at night. And it affects me personally. And you had commented, didn't you, to somebody as we were coming up the hall who had been involved in the writing of the speech. That's correct. I bumped into someone who is actually one of Kemi's speechwriters. And he said, did you like it? And I said, I thought it was a very good speech. And I said, there were a couple of chin wobble moments in it. Yes. And he said, those are the bits that Kemi insisted upon drafting herself. Interesting. I would add to that her reference to Geoffrey Archer. I thought she looked personally moved when talking about Geoffrey Archer, who died a couple of days ago, because he had just messed up. I messaged her after her Sunday speech to say, nice speech and nice outfit. I will be interested to see, by the way, if there's the same criticism of Kemi's deployment of emotion in this speech as there was a criticism of Andy Burnham's use of emotion. Because there were some unpleasant remarks made about Andy Burnham mentioning his late father. Yes. Along the lines of, why is that relevant? And your father had dementia, so he doesn't know what he wants anyway. Yes. And I'd just be curious to know if there's a double standard. I hope that people are sensitive and sympathetic to people of all stripes, regardless of how they vote. But just to go back slightly to the point about race, another line that stood out for me, another Kemi theme, is she said that Burnham is, quote, promising a better yesterday, I'm promising a better tomorrow. And isn't that really interesting, that the left is leaning into nostalgia. Yes. Whereas this, although it was a conservative with classic, themes, wasn't really. It was far more forward-looking. and it was about saying don't get lost in mythical memories of the past yes and that's partly you know what the racial debate is about and i'll address this very briefly because one thing i said at one fringe meeting uh was cut out and put online uh and has done the rounds and i've gone viral um well basically for saying that racism is bad yes quite and the point i was trying to make is the country has changed it's changed because of policy decisions some of which were very very wrong and because people feel they've lost control of their borders and of their society they're angry yes legitimately angry at politicians and they want to see yes and they want to see control brought back to their borders i sympathize with that but the country has changed you are not going to reverse that no and my point was that i am pleased to see the right accepts that change yeah and has changed with it because it would be retrogressive and immoral to try to reverse what has happened and the fact that kemi badenock uh is a nigerian britain with a scottish husband and mixed race kids speaks to me because it was only afterwards i had made those comments that i suddenly remembered i have asian godchildren yes right the product of an event and being received into the catholic church so within my own family and lots of people's families possibly even a majority of people now the look of the family has changed yes and we're fine with that now we're not in favor of institutions artificially trying to misrepresent the public this is the complaint about too many black people on television the point of that is we don't like being lied to and we don't like feeling like we're being engineered into being a society different from what we are and we don't like being lied to and we don't like being what we are but we have changed and it's incumbent upon politicians journalism and art and business to reflect the society that they seek to serve and i think it's an exciting moment in our history that the right is led by a black woman who reflects that changing country and this is the difference with the left she ain't going around saying i'm black i'm black i'm black no she's not she's not making you do that she doesn't special treatment no that's right she wants to be given the chance to compete as fairly as other people and someone's gonna have to look reform in the eye as well as restore and say do you really want to look like you're saying she can't run this country or can't be trusted yes because she's a person of color and also by the way make your mind up if you're gonna say well i don't mind immigrants provided they pay into the country and they support society yeah and they embrace what here's one doing it yeah exactly so if one of them does it and then you say i don't care she's not really english yeah that means that all along you were lying yes you didn't really care if someone contributed to this country you just didn't like black people that's right and i don't care if that's on the left or the right if it's about jews or it's about people of color i don't care that's an immoral position and i don't wish to be in a coalition with that kind of person okay well we'll look forward to getting trolled again by racists but having said that there was it was striking how she got a standing ovation for saying i will not unite with those elements of the reform party and it was who she feels reflect that i think it was interesting that she just singled out reform and didn't mention restore at all maybe that was tactical because he doesn't she doesn't want to give them the kind of oxygen of publicity she doesn't think rupert lowe's party is significant enough and you have to question that on the someone decided in reform messaged me and said this is all well and good but why has she been tally with rupert lowe and that's a reasonable question i've made that point why did they give him that select committee uh position i think internally the conservatives say because we thought he'd vote along our lines yeah and also it's a kind of better the devil you know situation but i have described it in a past column is like basically inviting the crocodile to dinner who wants to gobble you up but they have it she said we are we have had an export boom yes we listened to her telling that joke it was a good one in 2024 voters gave their verdict on the rows the plots and the infighting remember all that drama that's gone the conservatives have had an export boom we have had an export boom of drama queens going to reform and whenever speakers have been attacking reform they have singled out rob jenrick they have which is so interesting because in some of the fringes where people have been raising this question of do we want to unite with the right the vibe that we've been getting is yes but not him not with robert jenner it's really it's really not so yeah but but it's really specifically not just we won't do an electoral pact with but if rob jenrick came back tomorrow in sackcloth and ashes and said please let me back into the room i'm not going to do that i'm not going to do that i'm not going to party they would not let him in because they because it's because the disagreement with him is not just policy like it is with danny krueger they regard him as personally treacherous she also wanted to draw a distinction between the conservatives and reform on two different levels i think one level was i'm trying to give you a message of hope whereas reform is saying everything's broken the country's going to the dogs she was trying to be quite uplifting and quite optimistic which i thought was one thought and it was interesting that she made that comment let's listen to it about public sector workers which isn't necessarily something you'd expect a conservative leader to say some people talk as if the public sector are the enemy they are not there are real jobs in the public sector adding value to society doctors helping people get better soldiers keeping our country safe badass teachers like katherine verbal sing fighting to give disadvantaged children a vote better education conference these are our people too and we will always back them camilla is that something you might say if you were trying to reach out to lib dem voters i think it's something you might say if you're trying to reach out to any voters you can find anywhere right because we all like doctors and well this is the thing as well i wrote this down she's gambling on voters thinking labor is worse than the last tory government yeah which is no is a fairly simple proposition to write down but that's what she said she's basically trying to say to the country listen he set out his vision he wants to take us back to the 1970s you've got a choice now my party has made mistakes she acknowledged them she admitted to them but as she's often said it's under new management there were shades actually of william haig's common sense revolution in that come with me and i'll give you back your country she mentioned common sense multiple times yes so this was basically about saying we're here we're sensible we're conservatives we're the only ones who can really clear up this mess so come with me now the question is going to beat him whether anyone's listening obviously we're in the hall and we're listening we're surrounded by true tories who who lapped it up yeah is there going to be cut through with the country well let's mention some of the policies because what was striking was the consumer ist vibe of this yes in fact she compared the tory party to marx and spencer's m&s is a brand that has been around for a hundred years not so long ago critics said they were a bit stuffy and stuck in the past some were even questioning whether the brand would survive do you see where i'm going with this conference but now m&s is back in fashion great looks at affordable prices they have adapted their style for today's market and people are flooding back including me as you've probably noticed this week just like but just like m&s we must learn from our mistakes win back trust make people feel good about our party again so she was wearing marx and spencer there was a flashback there to maggie thatcher who likes to like to wear aqua scutum yes which is sort of the dress of the middle classes of the upper middle classes all thought was terribly gauche yes i was glad she avoided any reference to sort of the tory party feeling like a comfortable pair of underpants i mean that would have been too much but she gave us an example of how she will help consumers is well if we can get energy prices down yes that means a pensioner can afford to go out for a meal and they can go to a good restaurant and they can go to a good restaurant and they can go to a good restaurant because we've cut the taxes that means that people can open businesses this wasn't lofty political rhetoric was it was quite down to earth she mentioned other things about planning applications being stopped by bats and newts this was pound in your pocket type stuff i think in these three conferences we've seen the battle lines drawn when it comes to the cost of living crisis labor is saying we will help the very poor with welfare uh giveaways be you know love free lunches and schools uh or you know the cap on bus fares the reformer saying we will help the working class with tax cuts uh on income tax so that you keep more of the money that you you earn and the Tories I feel I mean they would say they're doing all of the above but it does feel as though it's very much aimed at middle-class consumers yes I mean it's a kind of appeal to the professional classes in a way having said that with the reference to public sector workers I mean we'd been challenging some of the Tories here over this let's remove the cliff edge on child care when a couple earns more than a hundred grand but then as somebody pointed out well we're saying people who earn more than 50 grand each so we're not talking about the super rich I mean she made a very funny joke about billionaires have left the country so there's no point pandering to them which I thought was quite well observed yeah and of course the capitalist dream is always that someday you will become someone who earns a hundred thousand yes and so you want a flourishing middle class in part as a point of aspiration so people can think that's what I'm working towards and the problem with the cost of housing cost of energy and that point about the the child care cliff edge is it's becoming hard to live the middle class dream that our parents built because once you get there you're clobbered by taxes and costs I thought it was also clever I mean Thatcher famously said the facts of life are conservative I think that she was trying to say with that kind of tripartite announcement on no stamp duty a reduction in IHT completely removing it from the family home but applying it to other inheritance and indeed the suggestion that she made with regard to not going along with a mansion tax she basically saying that conservatism begins at home yeah and and it actually played into the conversations about the fact that we're not going along with we had with the young conservatives who when we addressed the room and said who here wants to own their own home start a family yes all put their very young hands up but they're very odd people very precious intellectual gifted they're very odd i know but that whole kind of thing about a gentleman or or lady's home is their castle yes i mean if you if you can't appeal to people owning their own home and keeping more of their earnings at a conservative party conference yeah where are you going to come out with that's what it's always been about from ending rationing to buying your own council house exactly and the point about inheritance tax see that's interesting because we've been discussing can they cut through she stepped back from complete abolition yes she didn't quite go there her argument being i can't afford that so i'm not going to make a promise that i can't afford wasn't that also a clear blue line between her and trustonomics yes it was yes i'm not very good point checks that very good point cash but having said that the giveaway is so generous to people that it almost sounds as though she has abolished income you inheritance yeah maybe that's good you get to keep your family home and you get to keep up to a million pounds um i'd be fascinated to see the numbers on that how much that cost them well somebody said yesterday didn't they in fact we interviewed andrew griffith and it's going out on our youtube channel and he said um that tax only raises one percent of all tax revenue right inheritance tax in general therefore it all adds up from a political perspective i think the statistic is one in ten are on the hook for it one in five think they're on the hook for it and therefore even if it doesn't affect you directly you think it might have affected you and therefore you're being given something yeah you might not have lost yeah so i think it's probably good politics now also why doesn't she want to make the highest cost uh tax offer that she can it's because as she said she still wants to spend money on some things and that includes 50 000 new prison places which she says is the largest expansion of the estate in history and also britannia's shield which is going to cost 10 billion pounds and there's this complex radar uh and missile system which is going to keep us safe i guess from russia i'm just i'm not i'm not entirely sold on that one because it's modeled on it's basically a camp spin on israel's iron dome and israel camp well it's britannia sure there's because i just instantly thought of penny morden standing with a massive wonder woman style shield at the white cliffs of dover going saying no father no that's right but i i but israel is surrounded by countries that fire rockets into it i i just just hasn't happened to britain for a very long time and i'm not well i'm not entirely sold on its necessity you know this is all great and these are great ideas you do have to bear in mind that probably none of them will be enacted unless she pulls off a miracle and becomes the next prime minister because let's be honest the polling is still not great let's have a look at we had the opinion poll which suggested that labor was on 30 percent and the tories were on 17. i think that was pretty punchy and a bit of an outlier we've basically got labor according to you govern around 27 we've got reform in about 25 and we've got the tories once again on 20. yeah i know well according to uh you gov polling uh when asked how much if at all do you think the conservative party has changed since kemmy baked up became leader seven percent of britain say a great deal 23 say a fair amount 33 say not very much and 13 say not at all so only about a third of voters say that she's made a big difference i don't know but there could be a worse result they could turn around and say who what you do find though we're not doing that now no that's true no i well hey look i kind of i kind of come back to one of the compelling magnetic appeals of the british nigerian leader is that you notice her she is she starts a conversation we have to move on from very quickly i know i know but she does start a conversation she joked about that didn't she she said ah in case anyone hasn't noticed i'm black which was actually quite funny but uh if you look at the polling what you tend to find is reform has a ceiling whereas there's slightly more openness among swing voters towards going back towards the tories and we've been hearing you and i from pollsters and focus group people a really surprising thing which is that the next election is going to be in large part about stopping nigel farage and that means in seats across say kent and essex which are right now predicted to go for reform a lot of labor voters are going to be thinking who do i vote for to stop nigel and that's probably going to mean the tories yes so she's not just pitching to lib dem people here she's also got to keep her politics centrist and sensible sensible reasonable that's taught that labor voters can hold their nose and say i'll back her just to stop him also to conclude my thought was it was unashamedly conservative but what i quite liked about it is this rhetoric around fighting now and it wasn't quite penny mordant what was that killer phrase up and fight we stand up and we fight but she basically said we are in the fight of our lives politically for the future of this country and she gave the distinct impression that she's up for the fight and that she's actually a bit of a scrapper yeah and i think that will inspire a degree of confidence you know she's she's she she gave the impression of a strong woman i thought in that speech yeah yeah uh while this was all going on the reform party's internal investigation has cleared their own members yeah any wrongdoing so that's dan jukes and james or right in the alleged attempt to get donations from an american um i that's not going to put the matter to bed the police have their own investigation yes uh you'll be amused to hear it it doesn't hinge on whether or not reform clears its own members and indeed she made a joke about that about potentially people ending up behind bars she did she also spoke to the fact that today is october the 7th yes now as we speak there probably is a march going on in london right now disgraceful in my mind but yeah and it comes off the back of last week a motion at the green conference zionism is racism which seems to have shocked even green party members yes and chance was taken to task by danny finkelstein on news night and uh she she looked ashamed of her party we have an election a by-election in holborn kirsten's old seat thursday tomorrow we're going to do a reaction to the election of the new president of the united states and we're going to do a reaction to the election of the new president of the united states and we're going to do a reaction to the election of the new president of the united states and we're going to do a reaction to the election of the new president of the united states and we're going to do a reaction to the election of the new president we're going to do a reaction to the election of the new president of the new president size of the state but i feel increasingly we're being dragged into conversations about ethnicity and race and they're becoming hard to ignore yes and people are going to have to take a stand yes they are there are red lines that cannot be crossed which is why you haven't crossed them i haven't crossed them the telegraph won't cross them and neither will kemi badenock i also think by the way from the perspective of the british public i mean to bring the conversation full circle and talk about going back to the 70s you know people in this country think we've made so much progress on this yeah okay we've become far more colorblind than we ever were we're now in a situation where people are questioning whether they're english or british on the basis of the color of their skin yeah and as i experienced yesterday when i did an event with the shadow education secretary laura trott i spoke to a mum there hounding jewish kids out of their schools and throwing rocks at their buses yeah what have we come to yeah so i think it's perfectly relevant to be raising these issues very serious issues this week and frankly taking a bloody solid stand against them and that change in attitudes which has taken place is presented to us by some people as brainwashing as if there has been a project to change our minds about things well it's a mixture of evolving experience and actually appealing to british decency i do think there is something in the spirit of the country that spent so much money trying to eliminate the slave trade. There's something inherent in the British spirit that we don't boss people around and judge them on the basis of prejudice. I'd like to think this is not just something which has come down by government diktat. It's arisen naturally from the hearts and souls of British people who are, on the whole, pretty good eggs. Agreed. Right, we're going to hopford it back to London. We'll be back in the studio tomorrow, 5pm. Thanks for watching!