The Laver

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It's been a big week for the Conservatives, as they set out their stall at the Tory Party Conference in Birmingham. While their leader, Kenny Badenock has been gaining popularity and rising up the polls, her party has lagged behind. Could this be the week they convinced the public that they are a serious party of government? Or are they still haunted by their record and power? Our crack team of Westminster watches were there reporting on every bit of conference. And here they are with all the highlights and analysis you need. In an episode of Our Sister Podcast, the state of it. It's the most united I've seen the Tories in the entire time I've been writing about politics. There was a great quote where she said, "I am the captain, the manager and the owner of the Conservative Party." Welcome to this week's episode of the state of it, the political podcast from the Times and the Sunday Times. We are coming to you live moments after Kenny Badenock's flagship conference speech. With me today, I'm Stephen Swinford, the plighter of the Times. I'm Ben Riley Smith, the Sunday Times political editor. I'm Laura Spurrett, the deputy minister of the Sunday Times. I'm Patrick McGuire, Chief little commentator for the Times. So look, we have, Kenny Badenock has gone big on the economy. She is betting the House on the economy and she's got another kind of half rabbit. This time, not a full-fledged rabbit because we knew something was coming, but she has announced that family homes will be exempt from inheritance tax. We're going to talk to you about that. We're going to tell you what it's been like, the atmosphere, which is quite good. Generally here at Tory conference, take you into what it's like in the bars at the parties and how it felt. And then we are going to probably talk about Nigel Frage and Reform UK and Kenny Badenock making very, very clear. There will be no pact, no uniting the right. We will not unite with these people is how she put it. Well, let's open by talking about this big offer on inheritance tax that Kenny Badenock has made. Ben, what do you think she's trying to do here? Well, it's really significant. It's often called the most hated tax in the country. I've not thought that many people pay for it. Everybody feels it's like double taxation is unfair and Kenny may not made a big move. The big one is your family home. However much it costs 10 million, 100 million, a billion. You can pass on to your family inheritance tax three. That has a chance of really cutting through. Then the second element was separate from your home. Mary's couple can pass on a million pounds additionally free. That is a big pitch to Middlingland. What would you make for Laura? Yeah, I mean, I agree with Ben and what was interesting about that was that despite their being obviously a law of speculation that they would abolish it entirely, it was interesting that she actually used it to try and say, look, I don't want to make promises that are uncosted. This is, I will only bring this to you when I can afford it. This policy is an interesting indication of the fact that actually the priority at the moment really, let's be honest, is Lib Dem and more affluent voters in those subtle seats. A number of people that we've seen this week, and I'm sure it's the same for you guys as well, have been pretty explicit about that with us have said, you know, the strategy is, let's try and win back those Lib Dem and some Labour voters and crucially people that stayed at home in the last election. Then people will see us as the main challenger, the main right wing challenger to Labour and reform voters will come back. But it's not a first and foremost, let's try and win back these reform voters. No, so much of a cabinet minister told us the Red Wall has gone. I mean, we're not getting that. It's Boris Johnson's Red Wall. Yeah, it's a really interesting. So I think inheritance tax is such a perfect policy for that purpose, right? It is such a good encapsulation of that particular electoral strategy, which now, you know, as we've been saying, they are just very open and explicit about. Yeah, I think with all of that in mind, it was not a, as you say, Lara, it wasn't a, here's why we have the next government. It was essentially an elevator pitch for the continued relevance of the Conservative Party as a going concern electorate in at least part of the country. And I think on that front, they survived. Yes, you can read the speech had its most cogent, which was its attack, very conventional right on left attack on the Labour Party as, you know, a critique of the government from the main party parliamentary opposition. But what was more interesting, I agree, is the relatively small, but very well-defined bit of electoral territory and political territory carved out for the Conservative Party, which is not, as you say, Ben, a big tent party that's capable of winning 40%. It is a very traditional looking Conservative party that has its eyes trained primarily on atlement voters in the in the south and the southeast and the, and the aspirational middle classes. Now, that draws very short divangelised with Labour Party and reform. And I think the speech was also noticeable for what it didn't say, as much as what it did say. You know, I was listening to that. I've been listening to private conversations with Tories here, other speeches with the exception of Chris Phillips, obviously spoke about this shadow home secretary. The word that hasn't really featured at this conference at all is immigration. The last year when Kenny Bay not spoke in Manchester, what was on the lectern, what was on the banners, what was the conference saying that it was stronger economy, stronger borders, or words that affect. This year it is just stronger economy, and it's a more focused message, but it's also one that tells us they're approaching this fight in a different way. You know, they are, you know, they're not getting into a, a bidding, a public bidding more reform on immigration policy. And the speech on the posture and the tone, I know we're going on this shortly, is much more of a party aligning itself against reform and trying to look at the voters who have been tempted over to the left or may have switched to the left. I mean, the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party in lots of those seats in the south and southeast, rather than thinking, well, how do we, you know, keep our deposit in Makerfield or beat restore in the greater Manchester, mayoral violation should another one happen. You know, I think those questions are, those questions are gone. Those are the questions they fell to answer, and now this is the route back to relevance, this is the route back to a better version of survival, I think they've concluded. Well, I know they've concluded. Well, we should move on to the reform aspect. This clear and categoric dividing line was reformed. You came out in a really, and the most impassioned part of the speech by far, and she was saying, I am proud to be black, I am proud to be British, and that was a direct repost to Sweller Brahman, who has said that she does not consider herself to be English, because her parents were born abroad, and she was rejecting that, and basically saying that, you know, I listen to that and my mixed race children listening to that and growing up hearing messages like that. And that was a really impassioned part of it, and the ultimate message was, we will not unite with these people. And I know it's clear, and no one was saying that they'd likely to be a coalition, but if any, you know, you still read it occasionally, you're not at the right, they've got to come together. Well, I think that is very firmly off the table, they hate each other. Well, yeah, and I think, no, just I think worth reflecting as well, the language was extremely derisive from her as well. I mean, it was, she, I wish you referred to a form of that, was that, is that, is that the language? Yes, well, we are not uniting with that. With that, I think, you know, that's a rebel. Well, the language was moralistic as the language Keir Starmer used in his conference speech last year. And indeed, you know, he too spoke of a battle for the soul of the country, which I remember at the time, sort of more hard-nosed Labour figures on the Labour right were saying, well, this is just sort of Joe Biden 2.0 and Kamala Harris 2.0, you know, they said, let's have a fight for the soul of the nation, then they lost it because to that America's soul had other ideas. And, you know, it was, the attack on Labour was ideological. Yeah, there were bits of, you know, a bit of moral criticism and personal criticism, you know, there were lots about Andy Burnham's eyelashes and Paul Scratchings and oh, my God, you certainly don't know the Jeremy Corbyn. But it was a straight up and down. These guys love higher taxes, they love high borrowing, they love high government spending, and they are wrong. And if you speak to Shadow Cabinet ministers as well, I'd say there's a begrudging respect for Andy Burnham. They like, and I think, Kenny Baidenock enjoys too, having a proper ideological debate with someone who welcomes and invites it. Whereas the language on reform in that speech, even with the sort of obligatory throat clearing caveat that reform voters, lots of them are our people, was really moralistic. It was very personal. And, you know, talking about reform people, measuring up the curtains, not for government, for prison cells, et cetera. etc. It was exactly the sort of attack on reform you'd hear from a Labour politician. You know, if Andy Burnham was spoken about reform last week, he didn't, and that was another big, that was another big dividing line, can we be paid not to spoke about the green, she spoke about Labour party at some length, she spoke about reform at some length, you know. And if Andy Burnham or Labour politicians speak about reform, they'd probably speak about them just as can we be paid not had, and I think that is significant for the electoral landscape going forward. And it was, it was character she was going after, not policy position. So she was a essentially trying to paint them as slightly weird, in the way that the Democrats tried to paint Trump and violence as slightly weird at the last election. And actually her message was one of inclusion. And if you come here as an immigrant, you can be taken into the English, British family. That's almost, you know, let them rights a bit of lazy way of looking at it. But that is a more kind of woke liberal position than two years ago when a lot of Kenny Badenock's brand and a lot of her Tory leadership run was picking out cultural issues, cultural issues and having a proper girl then. So again, I think I paint this picture of her moving into this slightly more centrist position and trunner out forage forage. And it was interesting we do these huddles after the speeches where number 10, sorry, Kenny Badenock's team, which number 10 yet, will tell us about the speech. And they explicitly said, look at the standing evations, we, Kenny Badenock got the hall to stand up and cheer, not, you know, I think the right. And that is a rejection to all those columnists who are saying that's what they got to do. And I know her team privately say that you can't just add the reform vote share to the Tory vote share. And that's going to be two, two plus two equals four. There's a huge chunk of Tory voters that would abandon us if we ever embrace forage. So making it on character lines and making close, he's not going to do a deal, it's like a big theme of this. I mean, the one, one of the, I think key emissions as well, just in terms of just slightly challenging that perception that it was a kind of, there was a slightly progressive or I think in that sense, I definitely was. But there was barely any mention public services or the NHS, which I do think is a thing. There was, there was a lip service to, what was it, not all public servants are a bad essentially. They're interestingly praised public sector workers. Yeah, public sector workers, but, but there was, there was definitely less on public services and circumstances where I think traditionally you would imagine even a conservative party leader to go into that. But I do think when you speak to conservatives here, they would just say, actually, it's really important for us to focus our message. And like, the economy is the absolute main central focus here. And that does mean that you have to not talk about other things as much, which I think is completely fair enough. But it's interesting. There was no, there was no debate on economic policy with reform is the interesting question in that speech. And there are big dividing lines to reform. And reform would welcome that debate. You know, you see, you know, reform, Robert Gemini, in particular, you know, one of the exported drama queens, Kevin Baynot was, was talking about, you know, reform think the dividing line is the parties are now the tour, the reforms dividing line is the Tories are the party for the rich, right? You know, inheritance tax thing, they relish that. They've done that instead of increased the personal allowance as reform we're talking about. And it's interesting. In the past, I feel like we've heard much more from Tory leaders, see Tory politicians in the same reforms, economics is either a literature or left wing or indeed both because one gets the other. It was all about character, as you say, better than it's interesting. It is not a, you know, it is, it all suggests to me, I think it's true for all of our conversations. You know, they are not getting into a battle of ideas with reform or, you know, there is, there is a sense, there is a path back that does not necessarily involve trying to outbeat reform on a range of issues. And, you know, if we'd spoken about migration, we would have got back into the territory of, you know, the Tories are actually offering photocopied reform or diet reform or migration on lots of issues. So it's interesting. It felt like a speech that was aimed more squarely at the, you know, fifth to a quarter of progressive voters who, when asked by Polster's say, I would vote tactically for the Tories to stop reform in my, in my constituency, rather than it was thinking, okay, beyond the people who switched since 2024 and were never core reform votes in the first place, how can we, how can we get back into contention as a party, this capable of winning 30, 35, 40%. It's really interesting, both main party leaders kind of willing into existence, the return of a two party system, Burnham didn't talk about reform at all. Kim, he didn't talk about reform at all. Her whole message was, look, we're back to the big red lines on tax and spend. And yet, you know, you forget this conference, reform our polling higher than the Conservative party in the polls. More people are saying they're attractive to reform than the Conservatives, two years into Baynot. There was a tacit admission from Kimmy, essentially, but Shadow Cabinet ministers are saying it, so she did disappear to reform voters, you deserve better, that's fine. Shadow Cabinet ministers are saying they acknowledge, look, there is a core of reform support that we are not going to get back. These are forage people, they were you kick people, they were Brexit people. There are millions of voters now that are not ours. There are some that are floating and that we want back, but that is the kind of tacit underlying of this. Exactly as you said at the beginning, Laura, this is pivoting away from the Red Wall towards those lived-end voters. And it's, again, really, it's too congested because none of it can lead to an outright majority, but that's a problem. Patrick, can I just give you a set-up, the gift of a set-up? Oh, go on. Because, look, we should talk more about John Barnes, right? So John Barnes was at the heart of this speech. The most emotional moment of her speech was about growing up, watching John Barnes and people were not saying this kind of thing. You as a Liverpool fan, what does John Barnes represent to you? And why did that resonate? Well, she's trying to do that, you talk about it. I mean, come on, he's John Barnes. You talk about a beautiful set-up, I'm reminded of Martin Tyler's commentary in the famous four-three against Newcastle, Kevin King's entertainers, cut off the knees, Barnes, Rush, Barnes, still John Barnes, calling more closing in, but anyway, yeah, John Barnes, look, he was Jamaican-born, actually born to a Jamaican Air Force Colonel, John Barnes, absolutely iconic, Watford and Liverpool player in the 1980s, scored a beautiful, mazy dribble at the Macarana against Brazil, worthy of any Brazil player. But he was a trailblazer for Black representation in football, horrendously racially abused, actually John Barnes, there's a very notorious and poignant picture of him backhealing a banana off the pitch in full of a pool kit. But her point was nobody questioned whether John Barnes should also mention the Ian Wright, the Arsenal legend, nobody questioned, let me question whether they're English because it was a more inclusive vision of Englishness and patriotism, and it's worth pointing out that, you know, Kevin arrived in England sometime after John Barnes, he was here for his disastrous managerial tenure at Celtic though, maybe that's what she was talking about. But yeah, no, no, so it's, you know, they were very shrewd references to pick because, you know, it's hard to cut through, especially, you know, she'd effectively the leader of the, you know, the second and a half party in British politics. And it's moments like that, Barnes, Ian Wright, Clarkson, Jeremy Clarkson, he was on the conference stage well, which are the things that people might hear on the radio and listen to. But again, it's something that will spark a big and circular debate. And, you know, I'm sure we'll hear from angry reform people later in the day saying, how dare you call us racist and bio-extensional voters? Again, that's what happened to Keir Starmer last year. It is striking, that's something I keep thinking about, you know, it's striking actually she's hitting lots of the same notes Keir Starmer did last year on what reform are and their views on these things. She did use, she did use those references to paint a bigger picture or make a bigger argument, which is, you know, at Labour last week, we heard Burnham trying to say, I am optimism and Badenock and Farasha pessimism. She in this speak was trying to say, I am the one who's pointing forward to the future. It is Burnham with his bang on about the 1980s and reform with the questioning of English identity of the past that she's trying to own that forward-facing takes into the future theme, which is often very powerful in the elections if you can own it. Right, let's say let's head to the info. When we come back, we're going to talk about what it feels like at this conference, what the vibe is, as vibes are, everything in politics nowadays. And we're also going to talk about the direction, is there a way through for the Tories after it. Hi, I'm Katie Prescott from The Times Tech Podcast. In a special episode in paid partnership with Vitality, we look at how AI wearables and everyday health data could help shift health care from treating illness to preventing it. Listen to The Times Tech Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Aionos helps you get your business online without the tech headache. With Aionos, you just describe what you need and a real online menu goes live. For 23 years, Aionos has been redefining what it costs to get your business online, starting with a.com domain for a dollar or free with the right plan. Learn more at Aionos.com/podcast. From globalization to innovation, sustainability to market volatility. There's always more than one side to a story. Explore different perspectives on today's most important business and economic issues with the Flipside podcast from the Barclay's investment bank. Here are two research analysts in a lively debate and get insights from every angle to further inform your view. Listen to the flip side and your favourite platform. Welcome back. So look, let's talk about what it feels like at this conference. Now we've done these. I've done these conferences for so long now. I think the past decade everyone I've been to has been driven with, like, like, the internal scene warfare, bits of brief things, you know, Robert Generic on the sidelines slanging off whoever was the prime minister. So it's, like, this is weird. It's been weird. Well, who would have thought the only conference with proper blood on the carpet this year would be the Lib Dems, with, like, with the, like, severe, with a severe case of infighting? The Lib Dems have wept all before them. And the Greens Patrick and the Greens. And the Greens, yeah, it's the, the nice guys of politics have absolutely blown the doors off of the infighting this time. This in the Labour conference have been pretty, pretty nice of singing birds. I mean, can you, she said it in her speech, like, that was it. I mean, let you into a secret. We actually like each other when talking about her shadow cabinet. And it is this, this quite perplexing mismatch when you talk to people in the shadow cabinet as you have this week where they, they're very open about the fact that they feel positively towards their colleagues, that it is extremely refreshing to come to a Tories party conference where it isn't driven by infighting and they can talk about their breeze. And yet the party is on 20% of the polls with no necessarily clear or discernible route to, to hopping above and ahead of the reform party. So it's very interesting because clearly that it's not occupying the same part of their minds anymore. They're not obsessional about reform in the way they necessarily have been recently. I personally think there's a bit of complacency about reform when you speak to people. And also about Burnham actually is something we've been speaking about this week, but particularly in the case of reform, just the sense of, I mean, now we're a party of economic competence naturally because of the fact that there are these, you know, fair enough, really scary economic headwinds on the way. People will choose us over the reform party. The polls don't show that yet. It's true that there was that very promising UGov-MRP that you published at the times, which did show the conservatives ahead of reform on a seat by seat. Seven seats. Seven seats, but that is that, that Tory Party conference last year would have been practically unthinkable. It was 47 last year. I mean, it was abysmal last year. So it is true that they have come quite some way. And to the extent that they're banking on there not being an imminent election, there was room for further recovery. But even so it has been strange having a party that has been so positive at this conference while the electoral prospects of a party that, and this is not like being at the Lib Dem conference or like being at the Green Party conference where their status as minority parties is well embedded and and confirm the party psyche. This is a governing party. This is a party that is used to being government. And so it is strange to watch, to watch that kind of cycle. She's dominant. She's, that's the difference. She is dominant, right? Last year, everyone was out to get her this year. She showed that there was a great quote that she gave, I think to G.B. News where she said, I am the captain, the manager and the owner of the conservative party. It is all in one, which is incredible quote. And they're applauding along all the message. They like, they like a dominant leader, the Tories. And she is dominant. Well, partly because of the leadership session who were her two main rivals to the leadership, Robert Jennerer, and James Govley. Jennerer is now with reform and cleverlies off to try and be mess. There is no internal opposition. If, if, you know, if she fell under the bus, the classic leadership question, who would come next? I mean, I didn't know I did. There was nobody has had that conversation here on the margins because she's so dominant. I think it's, you know, it's weird on the one hand that you're only one in five people are saying you're going to vote for them and everybody's walking around with smiles on their faces. I think to try and understand that it's the first time in half a decade there are signs of the arrow pointing up, not down. She's so relatively popular. She knows how to prove her ratings have soared, and every shadow cabinet minister, he talked to, he says, look, she is dynamite on the doorstep. I'm not just saying that when you mention her, when people talk about PMQs, there is a connection there. You know, since 2021, Boris Johnson, vaccine bounce, they've been on a downward trajectory in popularity, in the approval ratings pretty much, a little bounce with Rishi. So there's chemi, interesting chemi thing with the electorate. There is the rebuilding trust on the economy, so they've actually managed to quarter-rise that wound by getting rid of her so quickly and getting in place and stabilising things. Number of our conversations we had is, slightly weird thing to be pleased about, but some of the shadow cabinet minister was saying we're the least disliked main party, so there's a big chunk of the electorate that dislikes reform, and there's now a bigger chunk of the electorate that dislikes labour than the Tories. So they're saying that as a kind of an opening. I mean, to me, if you have to map out theoretically the path of a Tories getting back into number 10, sadly, the reality is a big economic or financial crisis of what would open the door for them, because when that happens, when people get markedly poorer, things incredibly uncertain, they sad, naturally, on the party of government. So then voters turn to, right, is it Nigel Farage and that, Rappel to use chemis framing, or is it the Conservative party who OK, we kicked out of office, but they do have these kind of serious minded plans. That's the space they're trying to own, and that is the opportunity that it seems suddeny things, because change. Well, the two most striking statistics in that vein I've heard here on the fringes, one is from Luke Trail, the director of more in common, the pollsters who have made the point at a very well attended fringes event earlier in the week, which is OK, loads of voters like can be bad enough, but only a third of them say they're willing to vote Conservative. That gap needs to close even a little bit for us to be having a serious conversations about the Tories getting into power. And you mentioned the party that's most trusted on the economy, Ben. The party that's still most trusted on immigration is reform, and even in that scenario, I think, where there's a massive economic crash, if you walk into, if I were to walk, if we were to walk into a pub in Hartleypool, you mentioned the Covid bands, right, the prime example of Pete Boris in Hartleypool, or in Portsmouth, and said, "Hey, guys, what do you think a chemi bayonux proposal to abolish an inheritance tax on your family home, or have you seen the bum markets lately?" I imagine the conversation would quite quickly turn it over to politics, stopping the votes and immigration and economic grievance and disappointment would probably be expressed through that policy area and understood through that policy area, rather than just on economic. So, I think there is a whole amount of trust, many budget. I imagine people weren't talking about small votes as top of a. Well, again, we're now into hypotheticals about John Healey, and of course, a bum market meltdown through his own incompetence, which would probably be the most interesting thing John Healey has ever done. It could happen without. It could happen without the Labour could do nothing. True, true, true, but I think there is a lot of. You do get the sense that both main parties are sort of waiting for something to turn up, you know, to see the timesplush only the week about from our colleague Oli Wright about delaying the comrades' spending reviews later in the year, and what we've just been discussing about the Tory's best chance of being an economic disaster. So, like, that multi-party politics means everyone is sort of stuck in their own lane, and breaking out will require external intervention. And, unless and until that is the case, we are sort of inhabiting a world of wishful thinking to an extent on the part of both main parties, I think. Can we talk vibes? Because this is the party. So, you know, I've been coming to these conferences for years, and the Tory conference is very particular. So, in their house in years, when they had the power, when power was here, they were unbelievably round, largely, with lots and lots of young men. That's probably in the Tory's attract. Young men of a certain age, and the bars were crammed, and they were swept, and you get the algorithm only, it took, like, half an hour to get a pint if you were lucky. And you get, like, the giants of that day, like Liam Foxx or whoever, walking through with a phalanx of, again, usually young male advisors, kind of threading through the lobbies, and everyone would turn their heads, and it's a deeply weird thing, but it was a thing. This is not that. You could get a pint at this conference in about two minutes, so the cues were not big, but at least it wasn't like last year when it was funerary, or everyone was so depressed. And this was actually, like, people were quite positive. There were some quite decent parties, and the vibe was, we have to go to these things as a part of the job to try to speak to the politicians involved, but they seem more positive. What was your sense of that? I don't know, am I alone in that? Yeah, no, I mean, we had a moment, we were meeting something, the shadow cabinet yesterday, we went to the main conference pub, and I think there must be about three tables in there, and it was prime time, it was like six p.m., or whatever. And there was a free table. Unbelievable, unbelievable. Shocking scenes. When it was truly shocking, and it is, I think because Birmingham has played host to Tory party conferences before, they're so easy to directly compare the football, and that sense of vibe with parties, party conferences that you've been to before, where you're actually having to wait at the top of stairs for minutes sometimes to be able to walk down. As you say, you're having to elbow your way through to get drinks, or to just simply move through rooms, and yeah, it's been nice moving freely through his bases. The most damning indictment on their relevance was there were no protestors. Yeah, we didn't even hear with these very, very, very young Labour, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. Normally you have to shuffle past the protestors and hide your conference badge through it, you get to the door, but there was just, you know, even they can't be bothered to turn up. What would you make for Patrick? Well, my ultimate vibe check was, shout out to the shadow cabinet minister who came up to me at the spectator party, to say they're a massive fan of the podcast. Thanks for listening. I won't repeat your critique of my podcasting style or the inferred preference for my favourite political leader, but let's just say lots of people in the YouTube comments agree with But yes, yeah, I say look there was a sort of slight and it's sort of slightly cherished, so it's right at every party conference there's an error in reality because it's a self-selecting audience of political. It's a cult, it's a shit. inthusiasm. Yeah, and it definitely felt and also I feel like there's a bit of a time lag on, because often, you know, people are making judgments six months in advance. So it didn't quite feel that the Tories were the party of business again yet, but that would be because, you know, the head of public affairs at, you know, United Biscuits six months ago was like, well, the Tories are done, aren't they? Whereas, I imagine now they're like, let's blockbook a load of hotel rooms in Manchester for the, for the execs and actually, because we've got to get into business day. And there were a lot of them at reform, actually, the business folk. Yeah, tell us about the business community still think it's working. It's not going to talk to me like one of those tenths, if you want to do like some events, cause like 70 grand for the, for a few days or a year. Yeah. Or label with six, six and a half grand to get in for the, for the business day. Just for the business day, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, and there were, there were especially public affairs and business people I spoke to this week who are like, I am genuinely questioning whether it was worthwhile coming to this. I mean, I think that's really undercutting the vibe, isn't it? Yeah. Which is, we're just slightly undercutting the vibe, but I think, I mean, I do think that is a reflection on party conferences more broadly sometimes as well than just simply the Conservative party conference when you are mid-cycle. There is just a broader question about how much, how much worth it is sending people and spending lots of money being at these things, especially when it's no longer a two-party system, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think all those things come together. Well, I'm sorry, Ben, but I just briefly, I just think this is, like, label conference, this is a party now that is once again at ease with itself. Yeah. And that was the overriding feeling to say nothing about it, it's happening in the same way. Yes, exactly. And, you know, what is less clear from the vibes here, from the speech, from the reaction to the speech is the extent to which the country is enough of the country is once again at ease with the idea of voting Conservative in an efficient enough way and a geographically ideally distributed way to return the Tories, not just to power, or indeed power is a bit of a stretch, but to a clear, emphatic, second place over a four. Yeah, that unity also papers over differences on policy that would otherwise be seen as really significant. So for example, some of the more scratchy elements this week are like, what is the debate on the triple lock? The fact that there are people around coming back and not could previously said that, you know, it's perhaps unsustainable and would perhaps be sympathetic towards a position like Andy Burnham's, that is no longer massively significant, the same one, you know, the Iron Dome policy, for example, which I think had quite a rocky birth, you might say. Not an Iron Dome, even though they call it an Iron Dome, you're spitting the difference to ask whether or not it would cover the entire United Kingdom or just critical infrastructure, for example, those kinds of questions are just not massively interesting because everybody is behind, can we be not in that moment and therefore they don't take on the same level of political potency where if you were at a conference where there would be big divisions they would. This slightly wider point, I think it's such a fascinating moment in politics because you have two party leaders who the country doesn't really know and are quite fresh in their minds and are therefore open to be being defined positively or negatively. I don't think the country's thought about Andy Burnham for the last 10 years except for that point when he challenged Boris Johnson during COVID, Kenny Bade, not when you look at those work clouds, the big one that's in the middle that still don't know because most people in the wider country don't yet have a really good sense about who she is. And that means if you did ever have a campaign, a snap election, either one of them could suddenly cut through when the whole country zooms in on the election debate, it was kind of very fluid. Well, that question of cut through is an important one. I mean, we're speaking about an hour after Camille Bade-Nog. Embraced her husband, Hay Mission, rode off into the sunset after a conference that passed off for that incident and went just as well as she liked, but as she said something that has made the weather. I mean, speaking to a shadow of Camille in the last night, they were saying, whatever you thought about Andy Burns' policy proposals last week, he had made the weather, right? All of a sudden, everybody was talking about the trip-a-lock. Labour was leading the national conversation in a way it hasn't led the national conversation in years. I mean, you could also say the same, by the way. The same is true if you mess up your party conference, right? The Greens have been at the forefront of our national conversation with their Zionism motion, not that they would have intended to lead the national conversation in that way, but everybody was not everybody. You know, it was leading the news agenda, Ditto, you know, reforms conference, excited a lot of national conversation, for the wrong reasons because of, you know, unforeseen controversy. And was there anything in that speech that will, you know, not only lead the news agenda today, which obviously will, but will get people talking and set the contours of politics for a while? I don't know. Like, you know, is the inheritance tax big and big and bold enough in the way it was in 2007? I mean, as you were saying, can we have made not made a virtue of that? Is it can be saying, oh, actually reform a really, really bad guys, et cetera, et cetera? It's possible, but it seems less obvious what the big mic drop floor clearing moment is from her than it was, say last week. Right. I think that brings this week's episode to an end. And obviously, back next week, all roads point to the budget and we will all be talking I'm sure about tax rises from that very positive note, we will bring this to a close and can we just thank the amazing Harry, Harry, thank you very, very much for, for being our amazing producer and making this happen today. Hi, I'm Katie Prescott from the Times Tech podcast, AI is already changing business and medicine, but could it also change the way we look after our own health in a special episode in paid partnership with Vitality? We look at how AI wearables and everyday health data could help shift health care from treating illness to preventing it. IONOS helps you get your business online without the tech headache. Right now it's a chalkboard that blows over every time the wind picks up. With IONOS, you just describe what you need and a real online menu goes live. For 23 years, IONOS has been redefining what it costs to get your business online, starting with a dot com domain for a dollar or free with the right plan. Learn more at IONOS.com/podcast.