A rumour rumbled through the Westminster bubble this weekend, via a story in the Daily Mail, that Kemi Badenoch is planning a reshuffle, to remove some “dead wood” from the shadow cabinet and to promote some of her younger rising stars.

The suggestion was that shadow home office minister Katie Lam, a new ConservativeHome columnist, was to be ‘bought off’ with a promotion because she was on ‘defection watch’

Chris Philp, Shadow Home Secretary was on the TV to dismiss the story, which made reasonable sense not just because he, Mel Stride and Priti Patel were named in the article as being ‘at risk.’ The story has been hard to stand up.

As you’d expect we’ve dug a bit deeper. Sometimes an off the record chat about things a ‘party insider’ would like to happen, are written up and reported as things that will happen. It’s always been part of the nature of political reporting. I can only say, without offending our readers that the Leader of the Opposition’s aides gave me their reaction to the entire story. It rhymed with ‘concrete rollocks‘.

Having been mislead, as many were, by Robert Jenrick’s plans for the future before he was sacked and left, we did some checking. Suffice to say a number of people responded. Katie Lam believes the story to be a fabrication and had had no conversations about any of it. Friends went further to point out she has consistently said that she’s no fan of ambition over disloyalty. A point that has been echoed by a number of one time supporters of Jenrick who’ve told me they still feel astonishingly let down by him.

Members however have their own views on what the defections of Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman, and Andrew Rosindell have had on the Conservative Party, given their move to Reform UK, a party still consistently ahead in the polls.

Only four per cent more of them think the defections have strengthened the party, at 33.7 per cent. A further 16.3% think the defections have strengthened both parties. That signals something the party should already know: There are a significant – and not to be discounted – number of party members who are still waiting and watching to  see what happens with either party, before they chose who might ultimately get their backing.

The 29.4 per cent of members who think the defections have weakened the party are not entirely a surprise either. Remember at the New Year, though Kemi badenoch was voted our Conservative Politician of 2025 (before Jenrick was sacked), Jenrick was voted shadow cabinet member of the year (Badenoch not included) and Suella Braverman our Backbencher of the year.  ConservativeHome itself does not have a vote. It’s not just the 29 percent, but note the 14.2 percent who think the defections have weakened both parties. More one suspects a reflection of those who think that Reform’s appeal will suffer from being largely former Tories at the top, and yet those that left had views and skills they think the party needed.

So do they think there will be more senior defections? Yes.

43.7 per cent said it was likely and 12 per cent highly likely. Which begs the question of those 57 per cent who exactly do think it might be? The Daily Mail may have a view, but this survey does not give clues to that. Nor does it specify whether amongst those responders who think it likely or highly likely, there are those who wish it to happen. A scenario the leadership should at least hold in their mind.

It may also be a projection of timings. Many a senior Tory has told me of plausible scenarios that might unfold if Reform stay far enough out in front and Tory polling stays stubbornly where it is. Not inevitable by any means but neither to be dismissed. One of those scenarios is that Conservative MPs who start to think that situation will stay as it is until 2029 might just jump at a later date. Farage might say he has this ‘cut off date’, but I’d discount that. He does, for now.

There’s also a reason I’d be suspicious of a new set of defections right now. The biggest criticism aimed at Reform and Farage personally is his closeness to Donald Trump – who won’t be President in 2029 – and Labour have been falling over themselves to suggest anyone criticising their woeful vacillation over defensive planning and spending is just “a war monger who supports Trump and illegal wars”

There’s a reason for that. They desperately want to persuade the public to view the Conservatives and Reform as ‘Trump’s poodles’. Their social media outriders use suspiciously similar phrases and lines to that effect. It is the counter punch to them knowing their military and diplomatic posture hides their fear that many of their own voters will defect to the Greens if they don’t try to show they are more anti-Trump and anti-Israel.

We’ll test this defection question again, once the May elections are over.

If you’re dashing to the shops today to buy dinner, you may look out for food labels bearing the Union flag or the phrase “Made in Britain”, because you want to buy high quality food and support British farmers.

British produce is grown, reared and produced to the highest standards of quality and welfare anywhere in the world. We can be proud of the standards we have set – and our farmers are proud to meet them. It is why so many of us make the choice to buy British in our shops.

From farm kitchens and auction marts, to village halls and rallies, my shadow ministerial team have been meeting thousands of farmers across the country to shape our policies for their futures. One of the frustrations raised frequently in these meetings is that food which is not genuinely British is often marketed as though it were. At present, the rules around the use of the British flag and descriptions like “Made in Britain” are lax and can give a misleading impression to consumers.

Take the staple of any proper British fry-up: bacon. Currently, a pig that is bred, raised, and slaughtered abroad, then transported to the UK for preparation and packaging, can be described as British when it is stacked in supermarket fridges.

To the public, when they have this explained to them, this seems wrong. People rightly believe that if a product carries the Union Jack or is described as “Made in Britain”, it should be entirely grown or raised in our country. Those who choose to buy British food ought to be able to trust the claims about origin on the labelling of the food they buy.

This system also creates an uneven playing field for British farmers. Our farmers operate under some of the highest welfare and environmental standards in the world. We can be proud of that. But there is a cost to maintaining these standards. And that investment is undermined if lower quality imports can be processed in the UK and then marketed as British.

This is particularly significant at a time when many British farmers are struggling to make ends meet. From the Government’s disastrous decision to cut off farm payments without warning last year, which has caused cash flow crises across agriculture, as well as a bankruptcy-inducing carbon tax on fertiliser, to rising energy bills, labour costs, and ever-increasing bureaucracy, many are struggling. And that’s without mentioning the Family Farm and Family Business Taxes. It’s no wonder the Labour Government have overseen the highest number of farm closures on record in the last twelve months.

The Conservatives want to help farmers turn a profit whilst growing food and caring for the environment. That’s why my team is travelling the country, asking rural businesses how we can help them. One of the most frequently raised frustrations is the “flag loophole”; farmers see it as deeply unfair and damaging to their profits.

We have listened. That’s why we’ve announced we will close the loophole. That will help farmers, but also consumers. When shoppers choose to buy British food, they should be able to trust that the food they’re buying is exactly that.

The next Conservative government will change the rules so that where the Union Jack or claims such as “Made in the UK” are used, the produce must have actually been grown or reared in the United Kingdom.

For multi-ingredient foods, such as the British classic steak and ale pie, we will take a sensible approach by setting a percentage threshold for how much of the product must be British to display the flag or claim it was “Made in the UK”. This will ensure that everyday favourites are not prevented from using the flag simply because they contain ingredients such as pepper which cannot be grown in the UK.

We began this work in 2024, with a consultation that has been sitting on Labour ministers’ desks since the General Election. While Labour continues to dither and delay, we are working with farmers to develop a plan that will ensure British farming thrives.

This is not about shutting out imports. Britain will always trade with the world, and imported food will continue to play an important role in our food system. But consumers should be able to actively support British farming through making informed choices about the food they’re choosing.

In the months ahead we will set out more of our plans to help agriculture and the wider rural and coastal economies through business-friendly policies and de-regulation.

This Labour Government is destroying farming. By reversing their most damaging policies, like the Family Farm and Business Taxes, and bringing home the bacon by closing the “flag loophole”, we can ensure farmers thrive, and consumers can choose to “eat for Britain”!

Alexander Bowen is a trainee economist based in Belgium, specialising in public policy assessment, and a policy fellow at a British think tank.

Britain’s foreign policy has been defined, or at least surmised, by famous phrases; Palmerston’s classic lines, the first rendered briefly that “Britain has no eternal allies, only eternal interests”, the second “Civis Romanus sum” (used to justify blockading Greece). Go on further and there are Churchill’s “three majestic circles” – that Britain must sit between Europe, America, and its Empire, to find its place in the post-war world.

Further still, to 2001 and to today, and you find a foreign policy defined by Blair’s Conference Speech that “The Kaleidoscope has been shaken”, that Britain must “re-order this world around us”, and that “the starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause”. Twenty five years on we are living in that speech’s foreign policy, but not in that speech’s world even if shadows remain in our collective cave.

In this spirit then I would like to offer here a new phrase, not one that defines our foreign policy, but one that ought to. “Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy” – not my circus, not my monkeys. It’s a charming Polish idiom meaning, bluntly, not my problem.

Now this is not a call for reviving Splendid Isolation nor going down some Swiss or Irish path, but it is asking people to acknowledge what was once a basic reality. That the purpose of a state is to serve the interests of its citizens and decisions ought to be taken through that framework. Is an intervention in our national interest? Does it benefit Britain and its people?

Yet what we appear to have been left with is a foreign policy that regardless of who is in charge fails to ask that basic question – a left whose only question is whether something has been approved by the UN, a standard to which two and a half countries hold themselves to, and a right, exemplified best by Richard Tice, who simply asks how high must we jump when the Americans call.

Iran is bluntly case in point.

The Telegraph has, correctly, characterised the regime as evil and a global sponsor of terror, arguing that Britain must bomb yet it has been unable to articulate any actually substantive reason for participation only that Britain would be left as a “footnote as history unfolds around us”. What we are left with then is this: that Britain must spend its money, of which we have too little, and put military personnel, of which we have few, in harm’s way so that in, 15 or 20 years’ time, “Britain sent 2 fighter jets to the Middle East” gets to be in brackets in the body of the text.

The quid-pro-quo argument advanced by some at least offers a genuine attempt to argue that participation is in the national interest – that failure to help the Americans now means they might fail to help us with the Falklands, or some other hypothesised conflict where Britain’s national interest is actually at stake, yet it falls apart at the most basic level of reality. We already had a war over the Falklands, and one that happened when both British and American leaders and national interests have never been closer, in which the Americans did substantively zero to assist. Are we really to believe then that Trump today, having choked off Ukraine, or some fictional ‘decolonising’ Democrat will ride to our rescue because in 2026 Britain shot down seven drones?

Much of the right has correctly criticised soft power – that as wonderful as Downton Abbey is, a nation projects its strength through its ships not its TV Butlers – but it has failed to appreciate that symbolic hard power is just soft power with a squint and the deployments being demanded are very much symbols alone. This is not to say there is no place for symbols, far from it, but symbols for symbols sake is ultimately the kind of logic that gets you Bolivia ratifying the Treaty of Versailles or landlocked Paraguay declaring war on Nazi Germany and it looks, particularly as the symbols border on the irrelevant, increasingly ridiculous.

We must ask ourselves then what constitutes our circus and who are our monkeys? Europe? Certainly, we do share a continent and a destiny. The North Atlantic? Certainly, it is the Ocean upon which our existence depends. The South Atlantic? More or less, some 10,000 Brits do live there on islands they first settled and on land still administered by Britain. Dubai? Afghanistan? Israel? Ethiopia? I am yet to be convinced.

Do we share their values? I doubt it very much. Is our security on an island 4,000 miles away really dependent on theirs? I doubt it very much. Are our domestic challenges on illegal migration or energy aided by bombing a country with a hundred million people and the fourth largest oil reserves? I doubt it very much. We have seen perfectly well what believing that fighter jets are the solution for prices at the pump looks like, and it looks like believing the Mongols are the solution to climate change. It is inane.

All I ask then is this – that before we start shooting, that the people demanding it concretely and rationally explain how it benefits Britain and what our value add is. No vagaries about protest suppression or jailing journalists for, as terrible as both are, Iran is not our circus.

Cllr Nick McLean is the Leader of the Conservative Group on Merton Council

The London Borough of Merton has much to be proud of. It has a world-class sporting heritage, international recognition, and some of the finest green spaces in the capital. Yet today it is run by a tired, complacent, and increasingly unpopular Labour administration.

Across Merton, frustration is growing – and rightly so. Council Tax is high due to the ruling Labour administration’s maximum increases over recent years. Residents are paying more year after year, yet they are seeing declining services, deteriorating streets, and a council increasingly distracted by ideology rather than delivery.

This is not an isolated local problem. It reflects the same failing Labour mindset we see across London and in Westminster. From Sadiq Khan’s endlessly rising mayoral precept added to Council Tax bills, to Labour’s national tax-and-spend instincts, families and businesses are being squeezed harder while value for money disappears. Labour’s answer to every challenge is always the same: tax more, spend more, and blame someone else when it doesn’t work.

This cycle of Council Tax rises and worsening services will be exacerbated in future due to the Fair Funding Review cutting £13.4 million from Merton’s grant funding over the next few years.

And the Liberal Democrats? They offer no solution, because they fundamentally agree with Labour on the big issues.

The Lib Dems backed Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ expansion without hesitation and refused to support previous Conservative proposals for a Council Tax rebate to help struggling residents. When Conservative councillors challenged the council’s budget – asking basic, responsible questions about costs, productivity, and benefits to taxpayers – the Lib Dems had little to contribute beyond complaints about the lack of “gender-neutral language” in council documents. While residents worry about bills, crime, and public services, the Lib Dems are focused on virtue-signalling and box-ticking.

Conservatives stand for something very different. We believe in lower taxes, efficient public services, law and order, and freedom of choice. We believe councils exist to serve residents, not to lecture them, micromanage their lives, or waste money on ideological vanity projects.

Labour’s record in Merton speaks for itself. A never-ending war on motorists that punishes working people. An attempt to block much-needed investment in our local hospital through legal action. Time, money, and effort squandered while the basics are neglected.

A council should do its job well: collect the bins, clean the streets, fix the potholes and pavements, and keep council finances under control. Beyond that, it should step back and allow individuals and families to decide how best to live their lives – with more of their own money kept in their pockets. That is the Conservative approach, and it is one that resonates strongly with Merton residents.

Merton residents are recognising that Conservative councillors focus on what really matters: reliable local services, responsible financial management, and public safety – not niche distractions or ideological posturing.

Public safety, in particular, is now a defining issue. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have presided over the downgrading of police stations, and they support policies that lead to fewer criminals behind bars. Conservatives are clear and unapologetic: we will back the police, tackle crime, and stand up for law-abiding residents. A strong Conservative presence on the council is essential if Merton is to remain a safe place to live, work, and raise a family.

It is also important to be honest about the role of Reform. Reform cannot win in Merton. Their vote share remains small, they have nothing to say on the big local issues, and the only practical effect of their presence is to risk splitting the centre-right vote, handing power to Labour and the Liberal Democrats by default.

The choice facing Merton residents could not be clearer. Labour offers the politics of envy and ever-higher taxes. The Liberal Democrats offer the politics of victimhood and virtue-signalling. The Greens offer student politics disconnected from the realities of local government. Reform offers the politics of grievance without the ability to deliver. Only the Conservatives offer hope, aspiration, competence, and common sense.

This matters not just for the next local elections, but for the long-term direction of our borough and our country. Local government is where political momentum is built, where bad ideas can be challenged, and where Conservative values can be put into practice in people’s everyday lives.

On May 7th, Merton needs a strong, confident Conservative voice on the council – one that will challenge Labour failure, expose Lib Dem opportunism, and stand up for residents who simply want a council to focus on delivering core services.

That is what Merton Conservatives are fighting for.

FULL SPEECH TEXT: Kemi Badenoch’s Keynote Address to Conservative Spring Conference 2026

Saturday, 7 March, 2026

“We meet today with the world perhaps in greater peril than at any time since the Cold War. Relentless drone strikes are hitting our allies in the Middle East, countries in which hundreds of thousands of British citizens are in harm’s way. British sovereign territory is under attack for the first time in a generation.

And yet in the last few days, Britain has been described as weak. Our allies have accused us of deserting them, of going missing in action.

Imagine if you were Cyprus. What have you seen?

You’ve seen Britain dithering over sending the Royal Navy to defend our military base in the Mediterranean. The US, Greece, and France have all sent ships. Ours is stuck in Portsmouth Harbour and apparently may set sail sometime this week.

We have made America wait to use our airbases while Iran was hurling drones at our allies. We are giving away the Chagos Islands, British sovereign territory home to a crucial UK/US defence base, Diego Garcia.

No wonder our allies feel they can’t rely on us. And it’s not just our allies who are watching this. It’s our enemies too. As Labour dither and delay, countries hostile to Britain are working to promote their interests over ours.

It’s not just the regime in Tehran. It’s Putin, a man prepared to send more than a million Russian soldiers to their death as he tries to march his army across Europe.

It’s China, leading an axis of authoritarian states. Just this week, the husband of a Labour MP was arrested on suspicion of spying for China.

As instability spreads, these states are pushing further and further to see what they can get away with.

At a time when Britain needs strong and decisive leadership, we have a Prime Minister who is too afraid of making the wrong decision, too afraid to make any decision at all.

Last week’s by-election has spooked the Labour party. They watched the Greens campaigning on sectarian voting lines, a tactic that Labour have used for many years is now being turned against them.

And now, Keir Starmer is too scared to make foreign interventions for fear of upsetting a tiny section of the electorate.

Everyone remembers the mistakes of the Iraq war. Nobody sensible is suggesting that we should drop bombs without a second thought.

But Keir Starmer spent days consulting lawyers, plucking up the courage to say whose side he was on. Canada and Australia had the moral clarity to do so immediately and unequivocally.

And even now, our Prime Minister is sitting on the fence. We are in this war whether Keir Starmer likes it or not.

For too long, Britain has been governed as if it’s still the 1990s. Back then people thought the era of permanent peace, cheap energy, and expanding global trade would go on for ever.

From 1989 to 2022, defence spending reduced under successive UK governments of all colours. But it’s now clear that this era of peace is coming to an end.

Labour have no answers to Britain’s problems because they think the world is how it used to be, not how it actually is.

And where has that money we stopped spending on defence gone?

Before the Second World War, 1 in every £7 the government spent went on health and welfare. By last year, it had soared to 1 in every £3.

The Peace Dividend we inherited has been spent. Yet Labour are still determined to spend more.

What they don’t understand is that a welfare state and an NHS are not facts of life, they are products of a strong economy and a strong country.

That is the Conservative mantra today.

Public services need growth and economic security. We cannot have economic security without national security.

Public services need growth and economic security. We cannot have economic security without national security.

If people in Britain cannot go to bed knowing the country is being defended, then little else matters.

Donald Trump has made it very clear that America is not going to continue to fund NATO’s defence of Europe. The world has changed and it is not going back.

Britain must start spending 3% of GDP on defence. Every serious person in our military says this. Every serious country in the world is moving that way.

But instead of prioritising defence spending, Labour have chosen to spend yet more money this country does not have on lifting the two-child benefit cap.

We introduced the cap because we believe that people claiming benefits should face the same choices when it comes to having children as everyone else. That is just basic fairness.

Labour say it’s going to lift children out of poverty. Do you know what lifts children out of poverty? Their parents being in work, in a growing economy.

Right now, those parents are living in a country where unemployment is surging, where the cost of living is increasing because of soaring energy prices.

You bring these people out of poverty by fixing these things, not by giving them handouts.

Last June, we offered Keir Starmer our support in the national interest to pass welfare cuts so that he could spend more on defence. But he declined.

He spends all his time strutting the world stage at summits and international conferences. But the fact is he’s not even strong enough to win a war with his own backbenchers.

He is a political hostage, held at the behest of a load of half-rate left-wing MPs, none of whom grasp the seriousness of the world that Britain is now in.

While the rest of the world rearms, they are playing student politics.

Today’s Labour Party is nothing like the patriotic Labour Party of yesteryear.

In the 1950s, Nye Bevan warned about Britain not having a nuclear deterrent. He described it as the UK being sent naked into the conference chamber.

Well today it’s happening again. We are not deterring missile strikes against our bases.

The man who wrote Labour’s Defence Review, Sir Richard Barrons, has said the “UK is trapped in a conspiracy of stupidity because politicians aren’t willing to make the case for cutting public spending to fund defence.”

Well, we are willing to make that case. It is Labour trapped in a conspiracy of stupidity.

That’s why yesterday I announced that the next Conservative government would reinstate the two-child benefit cap and spend that money on defence.

That money will pay for the largest net increase in British troops under any Prime Minister since the Second World War.

I have chosen my priority and that is to keep British families safe.

These reinforcements will join thousands of brave service men and women and I want to pay tribute to them for everything they do for our country day in, day out.

This is another downpayment on our way to 3%. Along with our Sovereign Defence Fund which says no to Ed Miliband’s vanity Net Zero projects and reallocates £17 billion into defence instead.

As Rachel Reeves stood up to speak at the Spring Statement this week, oil and gas prices around the world were spiking.

Price rises that have already made it more expensive to fill up your car and will very soon hit your energy bills too.

The UK only has enough gas storage to last for eight days. Mark my words, a price shock is coming.

And when it does, it won’t just hit our pockets. It will have a huge impact on Britain’s borrowing costs too! Mortgage rates are already going up, and it will make everything government does more expensive.

Yet in that Statement, Rachel Reeves had nothing to say about this financial risk we now face.

Do you know what her excuse was? The OBR documents had already gone to the printers. Does she really think investors are going to say “Ok fair enough”?

Rachel Reeves is astonishingly naïve. While she claims to be providing stability, Britain is paying more to borrow than Greece. More than Morocco!

Investors have no faith in her to balance the books. They can see that she is not willing and not able to cut Britain’s debt.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are a frightening number of people in our politics on the Labour benches in the Greens, and in the Lib Dems, who genuinely think that His Majesty’s government doesn’t need to pay its debts.

These silly people are either too young to remember the 1970s or too foolish to have learnt the lessons.

Well, let me tell them; if we do not cut borrowing, Britain will go bankrupt. There is only one party interested in preventing that and that’s the Conservatives.

Last year I introduced my Golden Economic Rule.

For every pound we save, 47 billion and counting, we will put at least half to paying down the deficit – cutting the civil service, slashing the welfare bill, reducing overseas aid.

The rest of the money we save, we will spend on making this country stronger.

These are difficult choices for difficult times. But we must make them because every moment we continue to spend our children’s inheritance is a moment of failure.

No one else in British politics is going to take these hard choices.

Nigel Farage has said Vladimir Putin is the world leader he most admires. He blames NATO for the invasion of Ukraine. Reform’s last leader in Wales is in prison for taking bribes from Russia.

These people are not going to keep Britain safe.

The ridiculous hokey-cokey they’ve done on the two-child benefit cap tells you all you need to know about them.

First they were for the cap, then they were against it, now they are for it again. On the 4th February Reform MPs managed to vote for it and against it at the same time.

These people are messing around. Treating politics like it’s a game.

In this era of increasing danger, Reform’s priority is to take the savings from keeping the two-child benefit cap money and spend it on pubs, on beer.

Ale over armaments. Tankards over tanks.

I love pubs as much as anyone, and we have a real plan to save them. But we should not put our soldiers at risk for a few pennies off a pint.

Reform are not serious people and they are not going to solve any of your problems.

And it’s the same with the others: The Green Party leader only wants to make two things bigger and neither of them is our army.

In fact, the Greens want to scrap our nuclear deterrent. They want to leave NATO.

To be honest I have no idea what The Lib Dems think, and I don’t think they do either.

This isn’t just about defence abroad. We are also very clear what it is we are defending here at home.

The Britain we are fighting to conserve.

We are defending our values, our democracy, our education system which Labour is currently trashing.

We are defending our countryside so that our children get to enjoy it the way we did.

Our high streets, the places that hold our towns and villages together, not letting them turn into grotty, crime ridden streets full of nothing but vape shops.

We are defending people’s ability to go to their local pub, to have a laugh, to have a good time.

We are defending our culture of humour, tolerance, and free speech and yes, even queuing.

We are defending that.

We are defending standards and behaviours. A country where a young girl can walk down the street without someone harassing her.

We are defending a culture where children are treated like children and women have the same rights as men.

That is what we are defending.

You have to know what kind of country you want to create. This is why Labour have failed so terribly: they have no idea what they want.

They just wanted power; they didn’t know what they wanted it for.

Having a coherent British identity matters. The left think that culture doesn’t matter. It does.

This isn’t about the food you eat or the clothes you wear. Culture is not about going for a curry.

Culture is about standards, values, behaviour. What is acceptable.

Culture is about what is acceptable and what is not.

We have allowed too many people to come to this country who do not share our values.

We have become too tolerant of people who treat our country as somewhere to live rather than a place to belong.

Britain must be built around a common culture and a common identity. Newcomers should join our country, not try to change it.

That’s why last Monday I launched our new Culture and Integration Commission.

It will set out the culture that we want people to assimilate into. What we expect, and what we will enforce.

Conference, we are bringing enforcement back to this country. We tried to be nice to everybody, avoided tough decisions and it didn’t work. No more.

Every day we are witnessing a failure of enforcement play out in our streets, in our towns, in our cities.

Wherever you have travelled from to get to Harrogate today, you know what I am talking about.

Graffiti on public buildings and public transport, phone theft essentially decriminalised. The stench of cannabis wafting down a high street of boarded up shops.

The places we live in are going backwards and people feel miserable and helpless.

Some people will tell you that this is all about the economy. But that’s only half of it. Britain’s towns and cities are getting worse because the people making them worse are not being punished.

More than 1,000 people a year are convicted of burglary, not for the first time, not for the second time, but for the third time, and still not going to prison!

People are brazenly walking out of shops with armfuls of stolen goods. Drugs smoked openly in front of the police.

A small number of people are making life a misery for everyone else because they are being allowed to.

For too long, we have worried more about the rights of these criminals than stood up for the rights of victims. No more.

Britain has values, it has standards. If you break them, you will be punished.

That’s why one of the first things that we will do in government will be to hire 10,000 more police officers.

And I will make it very clear to them that their job is to catch criminals.

Right now, crimes are going unreported because people know nothing will happen.

Shoplifters, phone thieves, violent thugs, getting away with it. Just 1 in 20 crimes is being solved in Britain today. It’s shocking.

And it’s not just about catching people; it’s about preventing crimes in the first place.

That’s why we are going to triple stop and search and take knives and drugs off the streets – it works, we should be doing it. We WILL do it.

Many of you will have heard about the inquiry in Nottingham this week.

3 people who were brutally murdered by a man with severe mental health problems, who two years earlier had handed himself to Mi5 for sectioning but was sent home, who 9 months before had assaulted a policeman, triggering an arrest warrant that was still outstanding when the attack occurred.

This man should not have been on the streets.

So today I’m announcing that we will stop putting ideology ahead of public safety.

We will overhaul Labour’s Mental Health Act. And we are going to detain people who pose a risk to the public. Keeping them safe, keeping the public safe.

We cannot have dangerous men running around our towns and cities stabbing people.

Ladies and gentlemen, this was not a one-off. There was one in Edinburgh this week. Another one in Birmingham.

In November, a man got on a train in Cambridgeshire and started stabbing passengers even though earlier that day, he had already stabbed someone on a train in London.

It’s the state’s job to stop these things but the British public is being left in harm’s way.

We need to be smarter too about the way we hunt down serious offenders.

So today I can also announce that we will introduce Live Facial Recognition in crime hotspots across the country, including right here in Harrogate town centre.

We believe this will help catch 24,000 wanted criminals.

It’s not just dangerous crime we’re going to stop. Why should we put up with people in balaclavas riding e-bikes and e-scooters on our pavements?

What kind of country simply allows this to happen

So today I am announcing that the Conservatives will mandate police intervention and enforce increased penalties.

And we will also mandate police enforcement of our drug laws.

We have to do this Conference. We have to do this.

If the Greens get their way, there will be crack cocaine smoked on park benches. If we get ours, drug use will be driven out of our public spaces.

Quite often, wrongdoers need to be fined. Sometimes they need to go to prison. But at other times it’s much quicker and much more useful for lawbreakers to be forced to put right what they’ve done wrong.

That’s why my team has also devised a plan for new ‘Immediate Justice’ Community Sentences where someone committing a lower-level offence can be made to clean up graffiti, our streets or our parks by police immediately.

Not go through a lengthy court process while someone at the council is paid to clear up that mess out of your taxes.

Conference, we cannot have any of this enforcement without a strong economy.

If we want to pay to defend ourselves, to look after people when they’re sick, to keep Britain’s streets safe, we are going to have to get Britain working again.

What I heard from Rachel Reeves at the Spring Statement this week was an exercise in self-deception.

According to her, the British economy is flying. It’s the best it’s ever been.

I have no idea what planet she is living on or which Unidentified Flying Object she has mistaken for our economy because it is not flying.

She says the number of people in work is increasing. What is she talking about?

Unemployment is at its highest rate since the pandemic.

She uses these sham figures to try to convince us, I think even to convince herself, that everything is rosy.

The truth is that youth unemployment is now higher in the UK than the EU for the first time ever.

When was the last time she spoke to a new graduate looking for a job in the worst recruitment market on record caused by Labour’s Jobs Tax?

She boasts that the Bank of England has been cutting interest rates. It would have cut them faster if she hadn’t spiked inflation with billions of pounds of taxes and spending.

She claims the economy is growing. Growth forecasts have been slashed this year.

I wonder why that is?

According to the OBR, “incentives within the tax system… constrain economic activity”.

Let me spell that out for Rachel from customer complaints. What that means is more tax equals less growth.

Ladies and gentlemen, the fact is the British economy is being held back because for too many it no longer makes sense to work hard, to take a risk.

Sickness benefits pay more than the minimum wage. Politicians have taken the easier decision to put up taxes rather than cut public spending.

Like Labour’s Jobs Tax, which is killing investment into this country and costing people their jobs.

And Labour have bowed to political pressure from lobby groups to regulate business in stupid ways. Enough.

It’s time to unleash our animal spirits and our offer will make your life better tomorrow.

Abolish business rates for most pubs, shops, and high streets, cut national insurance for young people by £5,000 so they can make a strong start in life.

Abolish stamp duty so that people can afford to move house.

These are the things my government will do because we are doing the hard work to find savings.

If we want Britain to grow, we need to be an aspirational society where young people feel they can get on in life.

A huge part of this is about skills.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of young people make the decision to go to university because they think it’s going to give them a leg up in life.

But the reality, for many, is that all they leave with, is debt. Debt they will never pay off.

The LEO study has been tracking graduate earnings for more than two decades and we can see, in black and white, which degrees are worth it, and which are not

We can see it in our welfare system. 700,000 graduates are on out of work benefits. It’s astonishing.

And it’s happened because universities get paid whether their graduates do well or not.

No one in politics has been prepared to say “no”, the government will not continue to fund these rip-off courses.” I say enough.

We are going to cut thousands of the courses that provide no economic benefit whatsoever.

And because we have the backbone to do that, we can then cut the interest rate on student loans and double the number of apprentices.

We want to see apprentices in the careers of tomorrow, defence, tech, sectors in which there will be opportunities.

No one else in politics is talking about opportunities for young people. No one else is bothered about sorting out unfair student loans. We are.

We are the only ones who are going to do this. Who else do you think is going to do this? Reform? Nu-uh

They think that if you bring back smoking in pubs and nationalised industry it will bring back the good old days. No, it won’t.

Reform have absolutely no idea what they want Britain to look like in the 2030s. I do.

Conference, war in Iran means more problems are coming down the line.

An oil price shock that will play havoc with the economy.

I honestly don’t know what more it will take for other parties in Britain to realise that we cannot continue with the Net Zero plans that don’t work and rely on imported oil and gas with a higher carbon cost.

Yet Labour press on with their net zero nonsense.

I’ve talked about hard choices today. But this one is an absolute no brainer.

We have to drill our own oil and gas now.

British businesses are paying more for electricity than in any other developed nation.

It’s destroying our economy and we will put an end to it.

This degradation of our economy and our society is making Britain weaker at a time when the world demands strength.

This is real. And it is serious.

Britain is full of people who can tell you what needs fixing. The Conservative Party is the only party talking about how to fix it.

Do not listen to the people who want to get your vote by telling you that everything is irretrievably broken. It’s not. Britain is a great country.

We are a great country full of talent, creativity, and the resilience to meet any test.

What we face today are problems – real, difficult problems – but ones we can fix.

This is a different age than the one that came before. And when the world gets tougher, a great country needs serious leadership.

It needs a serious team. And it needs a plan for a stronger economy and a stronger country.

Britain is in this situation because for too long politicians have failed to take hard choices, telling people what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.

And we must acknowledge that this includes previous Conservative governments.

This party is different now from the one that lost the general election.

We have learnt lessons, we have got rid of people who don’t share our values.

Despite spring barely starting, for once I got my spring cleaning done early this year!

Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one Conservative Party, and that Conservative Party is back.

Conference. This is my plan.

Defend our country.

Defend our values.

Take back our streets.

Get Britain working again and restore pride in the places we love.

No other party is thinking about the problems in this much detail. No other party will take the tough but necessary decisions Britain needs.

As Conservatives we know that the Government doesn’t make Britain. People do.

Just like it’s not the government that creates growth. It’s business.

Government exists to create and maintain the conditions for success. Safety. Security. Lower taxes. And enforcement of the law.

The question I want us to be asking people at every election is who do you think is going to be strong enough, who is going to be competent enough, to build something that will make people in this country feel better off?

It doesn’t matter who you are, I can guarantee you that if people feel they can get on in life, start a family, buy a house, build a business.

If they live in a country that feels safe and familiar in villages, towns and cities where the law is upheld, they will live happier lives.

Conference. It was Margaret Thatcher who said that the facts of life are Conservative.

It’s now up to Conservatives to make people realise that she was right and we are on their side.

So conference, thank you. Our wonderful activists and volunteers. Thank you for all that you are doing because we are the party of common sense and the common ground.

Building this requires a team. Not just a team in my shadow cabinet.

We need Conservatives at every level of government from parish councils all the way to Number Ten.

Conservatives who know what we believe in, who share the principles on which all our policies are built.

The time for drama queens and weak leaders is over. We are living in serious times.

Serious times call for serious people.

That is the party I am building.

This is how we are going to fix our country.

Join me and let’s fix it together.”

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have embarked upon a reckless and illegal act of aggression against Iran that reeks of neo-imperialism, disregards international law, and makes the world less safe.

They have launched a premeditated offensive that violates the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force and echoes the disastrous Iraq war.

Plunging the Middle East into further chaos, with over 1,000 reported deaths in Iran alone, including at least 168 children in a single strike on a girls elementary school is obscene.

Choosing to jeopardise the safety of people around the world – when peace and diplomacy was entirely possible – is abhorrent.

Iran war: US and Israel making the world more dangerous

This escalation of hostilities benefits no on except arms manufacturers and hawkish politicians. Ordinary Iranians – already reeling from years of sanctions and severe internal repression – bear the brunt.

These Israel-US attack don’t liberate, they radicalise, destabilise global energy supplies, and fuel anti-Western sentiment. They make the world more dangerous for everyone.

I know a number of you dim-witted trainee fash like to read my ramblings from time to time. Thanks for the clicks, but rather than comment on my post asking if “magic grandad Jezbollah” is coining it from the Iranian regime, answer me this: most sensible individuals agree that a rogue state with a human rights abusing regime shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a nuclear weapon.

So when should we start carpet bombing Tel Aviv from 35,000 feet?

After all, if the West is to maintain it’s proud tradition of meddling in the Middle East for the greater good – or at least for the optics – why not apply the same logic that worked so magnificently in Iraq?

Inspect the oppressor

Invading Israel to inspect would simply level the playing field. Much like how we “liberated” Iraq from it’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction back in 2003, no? What’s good for the good and all that…

We’ve spent decades grumbling about Iran’s nuclear ambitions whilst conveniently ignoring Israel’s own arsenal, estimated at around 80-90 warheads by those pesky arms control types.

Invading Israel for its nukes isn’t about vengeance or warmongering, perish the thought. It’s about consistency, equality. And holding the powerful to account. If we’re really serious about a nuclear-free world, why not start with the worst kept secret in the desert?

Poor satire has always been my thing.

But in all seriousness, isn’t this the ultimate double standard? One lot gets sanctions and invasion. The other gets billions in US aid and a free pass at the United Nations.

Tell me, why should Tel Aviv secretly secretly hoard weapons of mass destruction like a dragon on a fucking great big pile of gold, whilst we lecture the rest of the world on non-proliferation?

It just doesn’t stack up.

I have never been big on conspiracy theories. But isn’t it possible a smokescreen was needed to stop us talking about the US Justice Department withholding a number of Epstein Files related to allegations that Trump sexually abused a child?

The same department has also removed some documents from the public database where accusations against Epstein also mention. So you can forgive me for being a tad cynical.

Starmer needs to find that missing spine

There’s no appetite for destruction in Britain. Just 28% of the country support the Zionist-led bloodbath and nearly half of us oppose it.

We all know Starmer is domestically in deep, deep shit. And so does Starmer himself. He can’t afford to push any further Labour voters leftwards towards the proudly anti-war Green Party. They’re riding high in the polls following their historic by-election victory in Gorton & Denton.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski, rightly described the attacks as “illegal, unprovoked and brutal.” He branded the US and Israel as “rogue states” operating under “the law of the jungle.” Polanski also called for the UK to sever ties with the US, condemn the actions (including the assassination of Khamenei), and end support for Israel.

This is exactly what I want to hear from a leading British politician who has quite clearly taken the time to read the room.

True solidarity isn’t dropping missiles

Britain must distance itself from the US and Israel’s dangerous betrayal of international law. We cannot and will not tolerate yet another reckless plunge into yet another illegal war of aggression, echoing the catastrophic mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Peace is the only solution to perpetual war.

Featured image via the Canary

Chinese spy-ship Liaowang-1 has entered waters south of the Iranian coast in a clear challenge to the illegal US-Israel war of aggression on Iran. The ship is currently sailing in international waters close to US military vessels. Any aggression by the US toward the ship would surely bring China directly into the war.

It is not the first time that the Liaowang-1 has been in the area, but it is the first time the ship has been seen openly tracking US naval formations. China has been assisting Iran in its defence monitoring and its retaliatory targeting.

The Liaowang-1 is a specialised intelligence-gathering vessel that operates from INTERNATIONAL waters, where any military action against it would be an act of war. It is believed to be tracking US warships and air operations in real time and sharing its data with Iran. China-based MizarVision has published satellite imagery of US vessels and land-based military movements in an open show of how precisely China is able to follow the Epstein-axis’s manoeuvres and preparations.

Iranian missiles and drones have already destroyed multiple half-billion-dollar US ‘THAAD’ radars and four AN/TPY-2 radars, severely hampering US air defences. There has been no confirmation whether Chinese intel played a role in these successful strikes, but both China and Russia have a strategic interest in thwarting Trump’s and Netanyahu’s ambitions for regional hegemony and monopoly of the area’s oil and gas production.

In a clear shot across Trump’s and Netanyahu’s bows, China has demanded an end to US-Israel regime-change attempts in Iran and says it is ready to restore order and peace to the region.

Featured image via Grey Dynamics