Kemi Badenoch is the next 'Mrs T' - but is that Thatcher or Truss? - By Emily Maitlis
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Emily Maitlis brings you the latest happenings from the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham.
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At this point in the long party conference season, something happens to your brain. So forgive me if I sound slightly embedded - but genuinely a weird thing is happening here in Birmingham this week: the Tories are looking and sounding, well, upbeat.
Despite being essentially leaderless here after their worst electoral defeat ever, the halls are rammed and the queue for the fringe events I attended last night snaked right down the corridors with a ‘one in one out‘ policy to accommodate all those waiting.
In fact, they don't feel ‘fringe’ at all - they feel like the beating heart of this week, precisely because there are no real set pieces - no big speeches. Rishi Sunak came and went in the space of one evening. He offered an appeal to unity - and then a sort of ‘good luck’ message of a man in no hurry to stick around.
As events in Lebanon dominated so much of the weekend, I headed first to the evening hustings for all four candidates hosted by the Conservatives Friends of Israel.
First up was Robert Jenrick, sporting a “Hamas are terrorists’ sweatshirt. In a room full of rather respectfully besuited folk, the message might have gone down well, but the hoody didn't.
Jenrick summoned his inner JD Vance to tell the audience he would move the UK embassy from Tel Aviv - a policy famously and briefly espoused by one Donald Trump.
"We need to move the embassy to Jerusalem," he declared, "and if the foreign office wont do it, I’ll do it myself".
A double whammy - channelling both the wall building of Trump and a pot shot at the British civil service. He then called for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards - the IRGC - an arm of the Iranian state - to be a proscribed terror organisation.
Next up was Tom Tugendhat who declared the attacks on Lebanon "a time of celebration".
"Nasrallah (the assassinated Hezbollah leader) and his child trafficking network has held an entire country hostage".
That got a big cheer. As did his assertion there must be no embargo on arms sales to Israel. He found the pulse of this crowd, and warmed to his crescendo: "This country stands with democracy, stands with freedom, stands with Israel".
Next up, James Cleverly.
None of the jingoism here. A much quieter address about what he’d learned through a family occasion - Friday night supper - with the ambassador - and how he’d responded as Foreign Secretary to the events of October 7th.
It was quieter in tone, more thoughtful. More full of sorrow, actually. And curiously quite moving.
And then there was a long pause and an extra round of filler speeches as we waited for Kemi Badenoch to appear - late and flummoxed when she finally made it in.
Kemi’s conference had got off to an inauspicious start. She found herself in a Times Radio interview arguing against continued levels of maternity leave and seemed to be saying it wasn’t fair to tax some people to give to others for mat leave - something the Conservative Party doesn't actually believe.
She spent the next three hours denying it - having her team video her explaining ‘what she really meant’ but the damage was done.
The Kemi problem, it seems, is that she prides herself on being straight talking, but isn’t, actually. In any follow up question, she either can’t explain what she actually means, or she finds herself rowing back from saying it. And then blames the media.
It’s got some of her senior Tory colleagues worried. One confessed to me last night: ‘We know she’s the next Mrs T - we just don't yet know if that ‘T’ is Thatcher or Truss’.
Of all the pitches, all the speeches last night, only one mentioned the blood shed in Gaza and a two state solution. Only one said the escalation in Lebanon looks ‘deeply worrying’. And that didnt come from any candidate. It came from the shadow foreign secretary Andrew Mitchell. A man who has long made the case for the importance of Foreign Development aid - precisely so Britain had a global, respected voice in such an intractable problem as Hamas /Israel.
When he did call for a two state solution - one angry man from the crowd shouted “NOOOOO".
It may have been a lone voice - but the response speaks to why the candidates didn't even feel they could go there. And that’s not healthy.
There are no rules this time around at Tory conference. There are no policy positions, or ‘talking points’. Those went out the window on July 5th when the British electorate told the party what they really thought. And that, perhaps, has created the giddiness you can feel in the halls this week. They are starting from scratch, no holds barred, imagination freed. Which makes the conversations more free wheeling and more fun.
But it also means we might hear some deeply odd - and rather unconservative - statements emerging. Which will hang around the necks of whoever the party next chooses as its leader.
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