The 2026 Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham was a four-day attempt to show a party that has stopped arguing with itself and started arguing with Andy Burnham’s Labour government instead. Held at the ICC from Sunday 4 to Wednesday 7 October, it was smaller and quieter than the old set-piece conferences, more united behind Kemi Badenoch, and built around one document and a run of tax, defence and welfare pledges. Sunday: the principles Badenoch opened by welcoming dele

The Conservative Party Conference DAY 1 TimeTable: TIME MP & SESSION 13:00 Resolution Foundation / Rigby Foundation: Steve Rigby, Dr Emily Andrews, Andrew Griffith MP (invited), chaired by Lord David Willetts 15:30 Centre for Policy Studies, “How to fix London”: Gareth Bacon MP, Emma Best AM, Ben Hopkinson, Lawrence Newport, chaired by Hugo Gye 16:00 Nesta: Lord David Willetts, Tris Dyson, chaired by Isobel Scott-Barrett 16:00X2 Conservative Middle East Council: Professor Lin

Reform UK Ben Delo £36M 2026 Conservative Lord (J) Sainsbury £10M 2022 Reform UK Christopher Harborne £9M 2019 Lib Dems Lord (D) Sainsbury £8M 2019 Conservative Mohamed Mansour £5M 2023 Conservative Frank Hester £5M 2023 Conservative Stuart Wheeler £5M 2001 Conservative Sir J P Getty £5M 2001 Reform UK Ben Delo £4M 2026 Labour Cayman Islands £4M 2024 Conservative Lord Laidlaw £2.9M 2007

Festus Akinbusoye has entered the Conservative race for London Mayor, setting up a contest with Sir James Cleverly for the party’s 2028 nomination. The former Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner announced the move on GB News and in interviews published on 1 September 2026. Guido Fawkes flagged it the same morning with the headline “Cleverly’s Challenger.” Akinbusoye, now a Westminster City councillor, is pitching himself as the outsider the Tories need after more than

Kemi Badenoch completed a significant Shadow Cabinet reshuffle on 31 August 2026, positioning the Conservatives for what she described as a shift “from recovery to preparation for government.” The changes came after James Cleverly resigned as Shadow Housing Secretary to pursue the Conservative nomination for the 2028 London mayoral election, and ahead of the party conference in October. The move also followed Andy Burnham’s appointment as Prime Minister in July 2026 after Kei

The Conservative Party has lost two of its most senior remaining figures from Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet in the space of a few days, deepening the sense of flux around a party still struggling to recover from its 2024 election collapse. On 29 August, Sir James Cleverly resigned as shadow housing secretary to pursue the Conservative nomination for Mayor of London in 2028. The former home secretary and foreign secretary said he needed to be free to campaign fully on London’