Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham RECAP

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 delegates back to “the city of a thousand trades” and noting a 50 per cent rise in young members attending. The set-piece was the launch of The Right Way, a roughly 95- to 100-page booklet modelled on the party’s 1976 Right Approach. It is not a manifesto. Badenoch’s foreword says the argument has to come before the programme.

The booklet sets out five guiding principles: wealth must be created before it can be distributed; freedom requires responsibility; rules need consequences or they will be flouted; a government should be judged on what it achieves, not what it intended; and the state should be strong only where individuals cannot act. Chapters cover the economy, energy, government, the country, defence, and borders. Much of the content restates positions already trailed — scrap stamp duty on primary homes, reverse Labour’s family-farm and family-business inheritance-tax changes, scrap business rates for many high-street firms, repeal and replace the Climate Change Act, reach 3 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030 without extra borrowing, and keep the triple lock while cutting working-age welfare.

The atmosphere on the first night was described by aides as upbeat. At a Conservative Home reception Badenoch joked about Burnham. Party managers later called the week one of the quietest in years: no Johnsonite, Trussite or Sunakite organising, and little talk of net zero, the Northern Powerhouse or levelling up.

Monday: the economy, and Clarkson

Shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith delivered the economic pitch. He promised to scrap at least one tax in every budget, called lower and simpler taxes his “personal north star,” and said cuts would only come when affordable. Specifics included scrapping Labour’s planned “mansion tax” on English homes over £2 million from 2028, abolishing stamp duty on primary homes, reversing VAT on independent schools, and cutting business rates for pubs and shops.

He billed the wider package as the biggest deregulation project in a generation: abolish the Environment Agency and Natural England, drop the Future Homes Standard (which the party says could cut new-build prices by up to £50,000), replace Section 106 and the Community Infrastructure Levy with a single charge, back a third Heathrow runway, and repeal the Climate Change Act 2008. Griffith also said the party would scrap “job-destroying” parts of Labour’s employment legislation.

The hall was not full. Sketch writers noted empty seats, and Griffith’s delivery was widely panned. The bigger draw was Jeremy Clarkson, appearing with Clarkson’s Farm co-star Charlie Ireland and shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins. Clarkson pointed at the sparse seating and said a lot of people had “come dressed as seats,” then talked about rising National Insurance and fuel bills on his pub and the family-farms tax. The session drew large online views.

Badenoch later insisted the conference was “buzzing” and better attended than last year, and that Clarkson’s own event had people standing. An 88-foot parody of the Bayeux Tapestry, heavy on Labour and Reform figures and light on Tories, was the other visual talking point.

Tuesday: defence

James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, announced Britannia Shield: up to £10 billion over ten years for radar, command-and-control and interceptor missiles to protect infrastructure and bases from drones and missiles. He called it one of the largest military programmes since the Cold War. Early briefing compared it to Israel’s Iron Dome; Badenoch later rowed that back, saying it would be a UK-specific system of the kind other European countries are building, not a copy of the Israeli one. It sits inside the existing pledge to hit 3 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030, funded by welfare changes and reprioritisation rather than new borrowing.

Fringe events covered energy prices, small business and the usual think-tank circuit. Reform UK was largely absent from the platform conversation except where Cartlidge attacked its stance on Ukraine. There was little visible effort to reclaim the 2017–19 working-class vote.

Wednesday: the closing speech

Badenoch’s keynote framed the next election as “a battle for the soul of this nation, a battle of ideas.” She accused Burnham’s government of a tax-and-spend approach that would leave people poorer, and of being addicted to welfare while “drowning our country in debt.”

The announcement she saved for the end: no inheritance tax on the family home, plus an extra £1 million that couples can leave tax-free. She said every bill would fall and the number of families paying the duty would drop by more than half, with an ambition to abolish inheritance tax altogether when it can be afforded. She wrapped the housing offer as a guarantee — no stamp duty when you buy, no mansion tax while you live there, no inheritance tax when you pass it on.

Other measures confirmed or restated in the speech and the run-up included halving employer National Insurance on earnings for 21- to 24-year-olds from 15 per cent to 7.5 per cent (costed at about £2.3 billion), blocking school leavers from moving straight onto out-of-work benefits, and a prepaid “Back to Work” card that would stop benefit payments being spent on alcohol, cigarettes or gambling. She also praised a Scottish by-election win and said the party would “fight properly” for the Union against separatists in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The verdict from inside the hall

Supporters left describing a party that is happier and more ideologically aligned than a year ago, with The Right Way as the shared script. Critics, including some sketch writers and activists, noted thin audiences, a flat mid-week, and polling that is better than last autumn but still below the 2024 vote share and behind both Labour and Reform. The conference did what Badenoch needed it to do internally: no psychodrama, a clear tax-and-defence offer, and a leader who closed the week rather than being closed by it. Whether that travels outside Birmingham is the open question.