Pro-Palestine marches have become ‘carnivals of hatred’, Badenoch tells Tory conference – UK politics live | Politics

Key events

Early evening summary

Kemi Badenoch went further than the government, telling the Conservative party conference that the pro-Palestine marches were “carnivals of hatred” and suggesting they should be banned. (See 3.14pm.)

For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.

Kemi Badenoch at the Conservative party conference. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PAShare

Updated at 13.34 EDT

Jenrick urges Tories to ‘get out of a suit’, and show voters ‘new Conservative party’ has changed

Aletha Adu is a Guardian political reporter.

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has urged his colleagues to get out of their suits and Westminster and “shame authorities into action” using social media videos.

Jenrick told a Tory conference fringe event his colleagues should not be focused on “merely making speeches in the oak panelled halls of the Palace of Westminster”.

When asked if he will show more of his family to the public in order to reach new voters, Jenrick said the Tories are facing a reckoning because “people are sick of politicians, and there’s a deep sense of anger and frustration in the country”.

In a rallying cry that sounded like a shadow leadership call, Jenrick told his colleagues:

Get out of a suit, get out of Westminster, raise the everyday issues that all of us care about, and get stuck in. Try and shame the authorities into action.

I do not believe that the role of Conservative politicians is merely making speeches in Westminster, in the oak panelled halls of the Palace of Westminster, and do not buy into this idea that being in opposition is pointless.

Citing a conversation he had with his taxi driver, Jenrick said there was a need to “engage the enemy more closely”.

In the same event, Jenrick appeared to indicate the entire Conservative party has to continue to not only apologise but prove that it has changed.

It comes after the party were urged to show “contrition” and “penitence” for their failures. Praising Matthew Syed’s remarks (see 2.55pm), Jenrick said:

Do we have to show that the Conservative party has changed? Yes. And it’s not going to be enough to make fine speeches or tweets. I always say that when I screw up at home, just apologising isn’t enough for my wife. You’ve got to demonstrate that you’re a different person.

Asked how the Tories can appeal to younger voters, Jenrick claimed Canada’s Conservative wing managed to gain support amongst young people, although they of course didn’t win, because they campaigned on housing.

The Conservative party got it wrong in the past. The new Conservative party should be one in which we are helping those people onto the housing ladder to have a stake in society and to get on the life.

Jenrick’s use of the term “new Conservatives” was interesting. Many Tories think Jenrick may become party leader within the next year, and if that were to happen, one option would be to call the party New Conservatives, just at Tony Blair called his party New Labour, to persuade voters it was changing.

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Sam Freedman, the commentator and Comment is Freed Substack author, says he thinks there is a fundamental problem with what the Tories are offering at their conference in Manchester.

I just have no idea who the Tories think the audience is for full bore authoritarianism plus austerity. Very few who want the former want the latter.

Even if their brand wasn’t in the toilet and they had a halfway competent leader, there is just no demand for what they’re selling.

And Robert Hutton from the Critic thinks the Tories may regret offering Donald Trump’s Ice as the model for the removals agency they want to set up.

Many of us in Britain stare in bafflement at US Republicans going along with things that they must fear they will one day struggle to explain to their grandchildren, possibly on visiting day in a federal prison. But they are constrained by party loyalty. There is no obligation for Britain’s Conservatives to handcuff themselves to Donald Trump. How much would you be willing to bet that Ice won’t, in the next three years, be involved in some kind of horror show of the sort that will dominate headlines for weeks? Would you bet your political future on it? Because Badenoch just has.

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Here is an extract from John Crace’s sketch from the conference today.

There was the same sense of existential futility inside the conference hall. The place was like a ghost town. The bars and stands empty. As if no one had cared enough to come, apart from those who were contractually obliged to be there. A place where the Tory party had come to witness its own extinction. The conference highlights were ghosts of the past. Some Margaret Thatcher mementoes and a Winston Churchill AI.

The Times columnist and Tory arriviste Matthew Syed tried to galvanise the room. Now was the time for some penitence, which is why Kemi was the only possible leader. Hmm. It’s possible he’s never met Kemi. Either way, it was a curiously flat Kemi who later gave the first of her two conference speeches on the main stage. She seemed bemused by the Autocue, bemused by the lack of energy in the room, bemused by her own speech. She didn’t even seem to realise she had finished. There again, even by her own standards it had been incoherent. The triumph of the Conservative years. The fightback started now. Leave the ECHR.

“We can win the next election,” Kemi insisted. Not even a very sweaty Chris Philp looked as if he believed that. It’s going to be a long four days.

And here is the full article.

ShareBoard of Deputies of British Jews welcomes police getting new powers over protests, saying it has called for this for months

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has welcomed the government’s decision to give the police powers to restrict marches on the basis of their cumulative impact. In a statement, the BDBJ’s president, Phil Rosenberg, said they had been calling for this for months, and made their case again at a meeting with Keir Starmer and Shabana Mahmood on Friday.

He said:

The government’s decision to move ahead on giving police new powers around ‘cumulative impact’ in response to the deeply irresponsible and offensive protests we have seen in recent days following the terrorist attack at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation is a necessary start.

We have been calling for this for many months, and it was one of our key demands in the meeting with the prime minister and home secretary on Friday.

But the government now needs to go further. We will work with them to ensure that these and other measures are as effective as possible in protecting our community.

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Updated at 12.48 EDT

Former Australian PM John Howard at the Conservative conference today. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PAShareRepeat protests should be allowed because they work, say campaigners, citing Suffragettes

Campaigners are arguing that Shabana Mahmood’s plan to let the police restrict protests that have a cumulative impact (see 8.15am) ignores the fact that some protests are only effective because they get repeated.

This is from Will McCallum, co-executive director at Greenpeace UK.

Protest works because it is repetitive. If police had told the Suffragettes or civil rights activists ‘you’ve made your point’, they would never have won the victories we all enjoy today. The home secretary must immediately withdraw this dangerous step towards authoritarianism. Any review of protest laws must result in greater freedom for people to make their voices heard, not less.

And this is from Silkie Carlo, director of the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch.

Repeated demonstrations have long been tools for change in our country, from women’s rights to workers’ rights.

For the government to mount this new attack on protest at a time when many thousands of people on the right and left of politics are exercising their freedom to assemble appears like a cynical attempt to suppress dissent. It appears that successive governments are trying every trick in the book to further limit our right to demonstrate.

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This is from James Ball, political editor at the New World and a tech specialist.

Just noticed the Conservatives’ British ICE proposal also involves using mass deployment of facial ID – still an unproven and unreliable technology that particularly struggles with non-white faces – to enable deportations. Which would inevitably mean false positives leading to detention of citizens

And this is from the FT’s Stephen Bush on the same point.

Barely a fortnight has passed since Kemi Badenoch’s reflexive and incredibly OTT hostility to the government’s proposals for digital ID.

ShareCorbyn’s Your Party says Labour giving more power to police to stop protesters ‘standing up against complicity in genocide’

Your Party, the new leftwing party being set up by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, has criticised the plans to give the police new powers to restrict demonstrations. In a letter to supporters, it says:

Outrageous. This morning, the home secretary Shabana Mahmood announced new restrictions on the right to protest. Her target was clear: peaceful Palestine protesters standing up against British complicity in genocide.

We know why they’re doing this. Like the Tories before them, Labour know they’re complicit in Israel’s genocide. They know they can’t defend the indefensible. So they’re trying to crush dissent instead.

Your Party is still the organisation’s working title. It may get a new title after its inaugral conference next month.

In his own message, Corbyn has described the move as “a disgraceful assault on the right to protest”.

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Updated at 12.20 EDT

Kevin Hollinrake, the Tory chair, told the party conference in his speech earlier that they had been “too soft” at times when they were in goverment. He said:

Let’s be honest. Despite the good, the good we did at times, we made mistakes.

At times we were too soft. We forgot about tough love. We were too eager to please everyone. In politics, you can’t please all the people all the time and it’s a mistake to even try.

Look at the country today. We are led by a weak prime minister who blames everyone but himself for his failures, the economic doldrums we are experiencing, the limbo we are in today. They are purely down to him.

Kevin Hollinrake speaking during Tory conference earlier. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PAShare

The formal conference proceedings are over.

There was a vote to the free speech motions. Members voted electronically, and the motion (see 4.27pm) was passed with 95% support.

But they did not tell us how many people were voting. At that point the hall was very empty

ShareAn attendee at the Tory conference. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The GuardianShareToby Young calls for ban on people being sacked over historic offensive tweets – like those that cost him uni watchdog job

At the conference members are now having a debate. It is on the motion that “this house believes that freedom of speech is a fundamental pillar of democracy, and we need to create stronger protections for it in law”.

The debate started only about 30 minutes after Kemi Badenoch told the conference, in effect, she would like to ban the pro-Palestine marches that have been taking place regularly in London. (See 3.14pm.)

Toby Young, the commentator who runs the Free Speech Union and who was made a Tory peer by Kemi Badenoch, is on stage responding to points raised by the debate. But there are not many. The chair is calling people who have indicated their wish to speak, but around half the people he is calling do not seem to be hear.

In the media room at one point the conference feed panned away from the stage, and showed a view of the audience. The hall is virtually empty.

In the hall Young said that, although it was not party policy, he would like to see an amendment to the employment rights bill that would “make it unlawful for companies to discipline, fire, penalise employees for things they’ve said online, unless they’re less than a year old”.

Young did not declare his own interest in the matter. Seven years ago he was forced to resign from his post on the board of the Office for Students, a university standards watchdog, after complaints about offensive tweets and comments he had made in the past.

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Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, spoke after Kemi Badenoch. He summarised the borders plan, and particularly stressed the importance for the party of criminals being deported. He said he was still shocked by the fact that Keir Starmer and Shabana Mahmood once signed a letter arguing for dangerous criminals not to be deported to Jamaica. One of them went on to commit murder.

That is a reference to this case – one that the Tories have repeatedly used to attack Labour.

In the past Labour has said that the objections to the flight taking off did not relate to the man who went on to commit murder, who was one of more than 20 people on the flight, and that if criminal justice failings meant that a dangerous man was allowed on the streets, that was the responsibility of the Conservative government in power at the time.

Chris Philp. Photograph: Phil Noble/ReutersShare

Badenoch ended with an attack on identity politics.

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 that they belong in a different category, or anyone on the right to tell them that they do not belong in their own country.

Badenoch said Britain was a multiracial country.

But it must never become a multicultural country where shared values dissolve, loyalty fragments and we foment the homegrown terrorism that we saw on the streets of Manchester this week.

She ended by saying only the Tories could bring the country together.

UPDATE: Badenoch said:

Britain needs deep change. But I reject the politics that everything must go, that 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. Only Conservatives will 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.

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Updated at 10.54 EDT

Badenoch claims Labour and Reform UK ‘two sides of same coin’, both trading in grievance and identity politics

Badenoch said Labour and Reform UK were just “shouting at one another”. She went on:

One flings around the word racist and will not be realistic about what is going on.

The other whips up outrage, offering simplistic answers that will fall apart on first contact with reality.

That is not serious politics.

Conference, neither of those parties offers the leadership that 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. And I am saying no to division and no to identity politics.

ShareBadenoch says Tories will draw up plan to ensure ECHR withdrawal works in Northern Ireland

Badenoch says Wolfson has concluded that leaving the ECHR is not incompatible with the Good Friday agreement. She goes on:

I know that there will be particular challenges in Northern Ireland.

But difficulties are not a reason to avoid action. They are a reason to work harder to get it right.

She says she is going to ask Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, to carry out a review into union-wide implementation of the plan. That will be put to the people at the electon. She says it will be “a clear, thorough and robust plan, not the vague mush”.

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Badenoch is now talking about immigration.

She says many of the problems in Britain relate to the use of litigation as a political weapon – what she calls lawfare.

She says laws like ECHR are “now being used in ways never intended by their original authors”.

She says the whole system needs to change, but she will start with the ECHR.

None of us had 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 did not support them.

Badenoch says she set out five tests for whether or not the UK should remain in the ECHR. She asked Lord Wolfson KC, the shadow attorney general, to carry out an analysis of this. (See 12.13pm.)

She quotes from Wolfson’s conclusion.

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 she says the shadow cabinet has decided, on that basis, that the UK should leave the ECHR.

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Updated at 10.30 EDT