Shadow minister says Tories would ‘keep political activism out of classrooms’ – UK politics live

And here is the latest edition of our Politics Weekly UK podcast. It features Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey talking about the Tory conference.

It is widely assumed that, under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership, moderate, one-nation Conservatives have been more or less wiped out as a force in the party. But, in her Guardian column based on her time at the conference, Polly Toynbee suggests they might be more resilient than we think.

Here is an extract.

If nothing improves by next conference, the mirage of Badenoch’s rock-solid support will melt away. But what would replace her? Waiting in the wings there is a model of what a Conservative revival might look like – Prosper UK, launched in January.

It tiptoes, praising Badenoch loudly, yet it is running seven events at this conference. That included a small Sunday night rally for electoral reform. It was addressed by former West Midlands mayor Andy Street, now co-chair of Prosper UK with Ruth Davidson It is backed by a formidable array of what was once the One Nation group, now defunct in parliament – or dormant under Badenoch’s rightwards march. No MPs back Prosper UK in public, but the group claims a third of them do secretly, along with 30,000 declared supporters. David Gauke, vice chair, has crept back into the party – he thinks by accident when the membership computer processing his re-application didn’t register he’d been ejected in 2019. In returning, he joined a battalion of remainer luminaries of the centre-right who’d had the whip suspended at the same time, including Kenneth Clarke and Dominic Grieve.

Gauke travels the country speaking to Conservative associations and others. Prosper UK is pro-EU, pro-migration for skilled workers and foreign students, pro-net zero and against the pension triple lock – and Gauke says that “Conservatives should be truth tellers on all these”. But though socially liberal, he’s dry as a bone on fiscal discipline, campaigning for low business taxes, a smaller state and enticing back non-doms – all Hayek, no Keynes. “No one speaks for some 7 million people centre or centre-right,” he says.

And here is the full column.

In her interview with Times Radio this morning, Kemi Badenoch hinted that, if Labour has legislated to make the pensions triple lock less generous by the time of the next election, a future Tory government would not reverse that.

In his party conference speech last week, Andy Burnham said he wanted to change the triple lock uprating mechanism from 2030, with the savings used to part fund his plans to set up a National Care Service. The government later said it would legislate for this before the election.

The Tories are committed to the pensions triple lock in its current form. But, asked if she would repeal any legislation passed making it less generous, Badenoch replied:

I have said that the triple lock is our policy and it remains our policy. I don’t think going after pensioners is the right thing when there are loads of people who can work, who won’t work.

When we are going to reverse Labour’s policies, I say we are going to reverse their policies.

I have said that we are keeping this policy, but if they take that money and they spend it on something that we can’t get it back from, then it would be difficult for me.

What I’m not going to do is lie to your listeners just so I can get votes. I tell the truth and I say the triple lock is our policy and we’re keeping it.

But what I’m not going to do is to say something when I don’t know what the situation would be about what Labour has done with that money. We have to be very careful.

Laura Trott, the education secretary, has given a speech at the conference. This morning the events are on the main stage, which is the smaller venue. This afternoon events are in the larger symphony hall.

Trott’s speech was largely a long rant about supposed political correctness excesses in schools, with pupils being told that white people are privileged, women can have penises, Britain is racist etc. She said the Tories would “keep political activism out of the classroom”.

Trott is now taking part in a panel discussion including the Telegraph journalist and GB News presenter Camilla Tominey. Tominey is no leftie, but even she seemed to think Trott had laid it on a bit too thick. Tominey said that, following the supreme court judgment, she thought children were no longer being told women can have penises.

There aren’t many people watching – either in the hall or on YouTube, where there is a live feed.

But the Labour press office is tuning in. It has just posted this picture of the event on social media with the heading “People disguised as chairs latest” – a reference to a joke told by Jeremy Clarkson yesterday, when he was sarcastically commenting on how good it was to see so many people in the audience for his Tory conference session.

Air Marshal Greg Bagwell, former deputy commander of RAF Air Command, told Times Radio he did not think the Tories pledge of £10bn over 10 years would be enough to fund a missile defence system that would protect the UK, its territories and bases.

As the Press Association reports, Bagwell said:

It really is a question of definition of what capability you’re going to deliver here, and what you can realistically expect in terms of protection.

You might be able to protect certain key sites, certain strategic areas. London would be an example, but of course that’s not enough.

If you’ve got military bases all around the country, you’ve got power stations, you’ve got critical infrastructure dotted around the country, then you’re really going to have to try and cover the entire area, which is is challenging.

Bagwell said a full system could cost more than £80bn. He said that the US was talking about spending between $200bn and $1tr (£150bn to £750bn) for their “Golden Dome”.

Bagwell’s analysis matches what General Sir Richard Barrons told MPs in the summer. (See 10.23am.)

According to the BBC, Sidharth Kaushal, a senior fellow at the defence thinktank RUSI, said that while £10bn would not fund an Israeli-style “Iron Dome” missile defence system, it would “probably cover” what the UK “actually needs” including horizon radar and more E7 aircrafts.

According to the Conservatives, a Tory government would fund the plan for a £1bn-a-year “Britannia Shield” with some of the money from the extra £10bn a year it would raise for defence.

Last month, the Tories published details of how that £10bn a year would be funded. Some £8bn of that would come from cuts to benefits – £4bn from cutting housing benefit, £3bn from reimposing the two-child benefit cap, and £1bn from the Motability scheme funding cars for disabled people.

The housing benefit cuts would partly be achieved by cutting local housing allowance (LHA) rates, which determine how much people can receive in housing benefit. The Tories have briefed that LHA rates would be set at 10th percentile of local market rates, not the 30th percentile.

The cuts would also involve social sector rents being cut.

Kemi Badenoch was asked earlier (see 7.59am) about General Sir Richard Barrons, the retired former head of Joint Forces Command, saying an Iron Dome-style missile defence system would cost up to £100bn.

Barrons gave these figures to the Commons defence committee in evidence in July on the defence investment plan (Dip). This is what he said when asked about what was missing from the Dip.

The subject of integrated air and missile defence also links to the absolutely vital point that gets lost so often: the defence investment plan is the articulation of the SDR [strategic defence review] – it is the things that made the cut for the money available. Given the legacy holes in defence, there is at least another half of the iceberg that never made it into the DIP, because it was not even remotely affordable. There is a £60 billion to £80 billion hole in defence infrastructure—falling down airfields, ports, housing, the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations. Most of that is not in the DIP, because it just could not get into the cut.

Integrated air and missile defence is the iconic thing that did not make into the review. There is about £1 billion in the DIP for it, and that buys improved command and control – you’ll know better that you’re going to be hit by a missile – some improvements for the Air Force ability to shoot down cruise missiles, and some improvements to the Type 45 so that it has a better capability against ballistic missiles.

Many people in the country assume there is a sort of iron dome over at least London, and that is not even remotely there. Even if you embrace the extraordinary technological change that some companies are producing in low-cost kills, whether directed energy weapons, DragonFire or cheaper missiles like Cambridge Aerospace and that kind of thing, the cost of an iron dome at entry level is probably £80 billion over 10 years—entry level. The IAMD [integrated air and missile defence] of my dreams is probably £120 billion over 10 years. But we got £1 billion, because it sits in that bit of the iceberg that never got to be remotely affordable. We should not kid ourselves that if we have an argument about the margins of the DIP, we are somehow fixing defence. That is just not true.

Here is Jessica Elgot’s story about the Tory “Iron Dome” spin gaffe.

As Jess points out, the Conservatives did not just call their plan an Iron Dome in their press release; Kemi Badenoch used the phrase too, in an article published under her name in the Sun.

Kemi Badenoch is now on GB News.

Talking about the Tory plans for a “Britannia Shield”, she says:

It is not an Iron Dome like what Israel has. It is not something used to cover the entire country.

This is her final interview from the morning round, and it ends with Badenoch, even more firmly then before, quashing the line that the Conservatives were using in a news release (see 7.59am) sent out less than 24 hours ago.

In her interview on Times Radio earlier, Kemi Badenoch said she had been reading about how some “heritage brands” recovered after losing their reputation for tips that might help the Tories.

She said:

I’ve been reading a lot about heritage brands that lost their way. And it always happens when the brand stops looking after its core customers and starts doing things that are off-brand. And it takes some time to recover from that.

But that is what I’m doing. Refreshing the brand. I’m glad that I’m doing well. I know that people have started listening to the Conservative party again. I want them to start buying.

Q: What do you think of the US pulling out of RAF Fairford?

Badenoch says this is very serious.

The UK needs to take defence more seriously.

Q: How worried are you about the party’s polling?

Badenoch says she wants people to know the party is under new management.

Q: Are you ready for an election?

Badenoch says there is a difference between being ready for an election and ready for government. She is ready for both, she claims.

Kemi Badenoch is now on LBC.

Nick Ferrari is asking how many missile defence units there would be.

Badenoch says she cannot give Ferrari the technical details. She says he should speak to James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary.

Q: But did you not ask how many units would be needed?

Badenoch says she focused on outcomes.

She says Cartlidge, a former defence procurement minister, is across the detail.

Q: Why should people trust the Tories with something like this when they could not deliver HS2?

Badenoch says her booklet, The Right Way, addresses what went wrong with government procurement under the Tories.

Balls asks Badenoch about Suella Braverman telling ITV last week that she never considers herself of English ethnicity.

Q: How do you feel about that?

Badenoch says she does not understand why people are policing others’ identity.

I don’t understand why all of a sudden some people are policing other people’s identity?

I think identity is something very personal. If that’s how [Braverman] feels about herself, I think that’s fine.

But what I’m worried about is politicians running around telling some people that they’re not English.

I remember when I was younger watching English footballers, black and white. I can’t imagine people pointing to the black footballers and saying, ‘Well, you’re not really, really English.’

I think we need we need to be very careful with this, sort of conversation.

She says, on gender, she thinks men are men and women are different.

But identity is different. Her children are half white, half black.

Q: But isn’t Braverman saying that black footballers playing for England are not English?

Badenoch says Braverman must speak for herself. She says she personally would not say those footballers are not English.

Q: Do you think Kemi Badenoch would be welcome as a migrant to the UK today?

Badenoch says when she was born in England in 1980 thinks were very different. Two years later the rules were changed. (Badenoch gave British citizenship because she was born in the country, but that rule changed.”

Ed Balls and Susanna Reid are presenting.

Q: Will you cut inheritance tax? You have called it immoral.

Badenoch says she has called it too high. But she won’t announce cuts until she has found the money to fund them.

She was very moved by what farmers told her about the impact of inheritance tax, she says.

Q: So you might cut it, rather than abolish it. Or raise the threshold at which it is paid. The government is expected to raise £15bn from it by 2030.

Badenoch says she does not accept all those figures.

She says the country is getting poorer. She says she was surprised Andy Burnham did not talk about the economy in his speech.