“The Conservative Party stands with the Jewish people. We will never stop fighting antisemitism,” she added.
Kemi Badenoch, with her husband Hamish, leaving the stage after delivering her keynote speech during the Conservative Party conference at the International Convention Centre, Birmingham, on October 7, 2026. (Photo Jacob King/PA Wire)Jacob King/PA Wire
Badenoch also took aim at her political rivals and blasted Andy Burnham for previously serving in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.
“He wasn’t the junior DEFRA PPS. He was the Shadow Home Secretary. Nodding along to a man who wanted to take the UK out of NATO, give up our nuclear deterrent, and even disband our army.
“When Andy Burnham was in opposition with Corbyn, he didn't feel a need to change the leader. But after Keir Starmer won a landslide, Burnham couldn't wait to get back and take it off him.”
She continued: “That is who Andy Burnham is”, adding: “Don't let this man fool you with his fluttering eyelashes and his pork scratchings”.
The Tory leader then criticised his announcement of a national care service, which she said came without a proper plan to pay for it.
“Yet again we have a Labour Prime Minister making a promise that he cannot deliver with sums that do not add up,” she said.
Badenoch made an appeal to Reform UK voters, describing them as “our people”, and urging them to “come back home” before attacking the party’s leadership.
“A year ago, those politicians were measuring up the curtains for Number 10. Now, some of them, are measuring up the curtains for their prison cells”, she told the crowd, making reference to their former leader in Wales being sent to prison for taking bribes from Russia.
On the topic of the investigation into Nigel Farage by Parliament’s standards commissioner over his failure to declare a £5 million gift, she asked “Has anyone here ever received a £5 million gift? I haven’t,” to laughs from the audience.
“Just when you think Reform couldn’t get any weirder, there’s a convicted fraudster who calls himself Posh George and calls Nigel Farage ‘Daddy’.
“The circus goes on and on and it will never stop, because this is who Reform politicians are. To those who say unite the right, we are not uniting with that.”
Badenoch then delivered a passionate criticism of arguments put forward by Suella Braverman, the former Conservative home secretary and now Reform UK education spokesperson, that she was British, but not English, as she saw Englishness as an ethnicity.
“I don’t want to explain to my son when we’re watching our brilliant England team play football that some people don’t think our black players are English. I remember back in the day when Ian Wright and John Barnes were playing, nobody was questioning whether they were English.”
She continued: “We certainly didn’t have sitting MPs questioning whether they were English. We must not let these people take us backwards. That is not the country we are.”
Badenoch also announced that the Conservatives would not be abolishing inheritance tax, as it would not be economically prudent to do so.
However, she said that a Conservative government would introduce legislation so that “nobody would pay inheritance tax on their family home” and that couples would be able to “to leave an additional £1 million tax free.”
