👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈 Robert Jenrick joins Reform and becomes the party's second big name defection from the Tories in days - after former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi jumped ship earlier in the week. So how big of a blow is this to Kemi Badenoch? Beth Rigby, Ruth Davidson and Harriet Harman think she's come out of it all pretty well after dramatically...

From Nadhim Zahawi is speaking now. He says “Britain needs Nigel Farage as prime minister”. His declaration will come as a shock to his old colleagues, he says. But he says other people will not be surprised. We can all see that our beautiful, ancient, kind, magical island story has reached a dark and dangerous chapter. He says in Westminster people may think things are going fine. But that is not...

A Reform UK councillor has defected to the Tories after becoming "uncomfortable" with Nigel Farage's party. James Buchan said he wanted to be able to "look my family in the eye and say, 'that's not who I am'" after his former party announced plans to scrap indefinite leave to remain. The Dartford Borough councillor, who won his seat for Reform in a by-election in July, said the policy creates a "h...

The day before Kemi Badenoch promised Trump-style mass deportations during her Tory conference speech, she defended Conservative MP Robert Jenrick over his complaints he hadn’t seen “another white face’ in a Birmingham neighbourhood. As the Tories shift further right, Badenoch has become aggressive about immigration, even denying her own Nigerian identity. This contrasts with her early days in pol...

Much of democratic politics is about getting people’s attention. That’s a particular problem for struggling, less-than-compelling leaders. The further your party falls in the polls, the larger the temptation to launch dramatic, supposedly transformational policies. It’s like speaking more and more loudly to someone who has stopped listening. Thus this week’s Conservative conference in Manchester,...

Michael Heseltine rolled back the years with a blistering onslaught at the Tory conference on Kemi Badenoch's new policies on human rights, asylum seekers and climate change. The 92-year-old former deputy prime minister also bitterly attacked Nigel Farage, appearing to compare Reform UK and other right-wing parties in Europe to the fascists of the 1930s. The Conservative peer, nicknamed 'Tarzan' w...

Spare a thought for the Conservative party. It’s hard believing in meritocracy, yet finding yourself polling at 15%. It’s even harder having wanged on mercilessly for decades about natural selection, yet now constantly finding yourself appearing in the same sentence as the phrase “facing extinction”. And it’s harder still to find polling guru John Curtice doing panels at your conference in which h...

The opening speeches by the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, and her shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, to their party conference were loud with conviction but thin on substance. They felt like ritual incantations in a world turned upside down. Mr Stride’s pitch – £47bn of savings via welfare cuts and business rebates – is an empty promise given the party’s standing in the opinion polls. But it is a tenet...

Good morning. The Conservative party conference is starting in Manchester today – although you could be forgiven for thinking it’s another Reform UK conference, because Kemi Badenoch has already made two huge policy commitments that are straight out of the Nigel Farage manual. First, on Friday night, she announced that the Tories would withdraw from the European convention on human rights. Conserv...

Conservative Party conferences of old were packed out events bustling with ministers, MPs, lobbyists and members. Roll on just over a year after their biggest defeat ever, and the Tories' gathering in Manchester, from 5-8 October, will be a more sober affair. Despite their recent loss, last year's conference was anything but subdued as it was turned into a hustings for their new leader to replace...

Will as many people as last year come to Tory conference? I have a leak that helps explore this - and it reveals the party itself is expecting fewer. Normally you don't get any detailed breakdowns of conference data - who is coming and in what category. But I've been shared an early cut of the numbers from this year. What you can see above is a screenshot of the data sent to the party board. I am...

The former Conservative party chair Sir Jake Berry has joined Reform UK in the most high-profile defection so far to Nigel Farage’s party from the Tories. In a fresh blow to Kemi Badenoch, the former cabinet minister said his former party had “abandoned the British people” and said he wanted to see Reform UK form the next government. Berry, a close ally of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, led the “nor...

AN “outrageous” decision to give special treatment to ethnic minority and transgender criminals will be fought in the courts by the Tories. Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick has pledged a Judicial Review of the new sentencing guidelines if ministers fail to force a u-turn. 2 Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick has vowed to fight the Sentencing Council in the courtsCredit: PA 2 Justice Se...

KEMI Badenoch will not reveal any major policies for at least two years as she orders the Conservatives to be ready to fight an election by 2028. The Tory leader unveiled her “three-year plan” to turn the routed party around at a Shadow Cabinet meeting on Tuesday that leans heavily on Sir Keir Starmer’s own path to power. 1 Kemi Badenoch will not reveal any major policies for two years as she unve...

LABOUR has been accused of caving in to union pressure by scrapping Tory school reforms that helped England soar in global rankings. Tories last night warned the shake-up could slash pay for over 20,000 teachers by scrapping higher wages in more than 500 academies. 1 Labour has been accused of caving in to union pressure by scrapping Tory school reforms that helped England soar in global rankingsC...

Treasury officials may have broken the law when they failed to alert the Office for Budget Responsibility about £9.5bn of spending that should have appeared in the March budget, MPs have been told. Laws governing how the Treasury gives information to the OBR could have been breached when civil servants kept spending commitments under wraps, the government’s independent economic forecaster said. Th...

After emerging victorious in the Tory leadership race, Kemi Badenoch has begun to unveil her top team in her new shadow cabinet. Ms Badenoch, who beat Robert Jenrick to become the new Tory leader, has said the party's first duty would be to hold Labour to account and to prepare for government by the time of the next election. Here are the appointments she has made so far: Dame Rebecca Harris - chi...

Good morning. Conservative party members have chosen a new leader and the winner will be announced shortly after 11am at an event in London. This has only happened four times before since William Hague changed the rules a quarter of century ago to ensure members, not MPs, take the final decision about who should be leader. The process has not always worked very well – there’s been a failure rate o...

As the race for the Conservative leadership enters it final stage, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick are pushing back against the idea that the party faces a limited choice between two candidates from the same populist right wing. While each won the support of only about a third of the Conservatives’ 121 MPs as they reached the final vote among party members, they and their allies have repeatedly t...

1. Badenoch was the winner – at least, the audience thought so Judging the winner of such events is an imprecise business, with the additional caveat that the impression gained by those inside the studio might not be the same as viewers watching on TV. But Badenoch definitely got a better reception. Jenrick won regular and polite applause for his well-rehearsed, policy-heavy pitch. The response to...

The Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has been criticised for a campaign pamphlet that said autistic people received “better treatment” and “economic privileges and protections”. A pamphlet published by Badenoch’s campaign team at the Conservative party conference argued that conditions such as anxiety, as well as an autism diagnosis, had gone from something “people should work on themselves...

One of Kemi Badenoch’s Tory leadership campaign funders is a councillor who had oversight of Grenfell Tower and dismissed some residents’ complaints about the pre-fire refurbishment as “grossly exaggerated”. One survivor of the blaze that killed 72 people said he was “disgusted” that Quentin Marshall, a senior politician at the Conservative-controlled Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC)...

The main Conservative centrist group will not endorse Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick in the Tory leadership race amid concern the party risks splitting in a lurch to the right. In a strongly worded statement, the Tory Reform Group (TRG), seen as the main forum for one-nation Conservatives, condemned Badenoch and Jenrick for having “used rhetoric and focused on issues which are far and away from t...

JAMES CLEVERLY has crashed out of the Tory leadership contest - pitting Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick in a battle for the crown. A shock final vote of Conservative MPs saw Mr Cleverly plummet from the top spot to last place in the space of 24 hours. 3 James Cleverly crashed out in final Tory MPs leadership ballotCredit: Alamy 3 Kemi Badenoch went into the final round as the grassroots favourite...

THE Tory leadership race blew wide open yesterday as underdog James Cleverly stormed into the lead. His victory in the third round of voting left the two former frontrunners, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, scrambling to secure support from the right of the party. 2 The Tory leadership race blew wide open yesterday as underdog James Cleverly stormed into the leadCredit: Getty 2 James Cleverley l...