It’s Badenoch’s Tory show, 2025: like Britain seeing an old flame and remembering why we blocked their number | Frances Ryan

The conference offers a flailing leader, Trumpite policies and rivals jockeying for position. It is comical, but also worryingIf last year’s general election marked the death of the Conservative party, this week’s conference in Manchester is the wake. Based on the policies unveiled in recent days, one can only assume there’s an open bar. Watching Kemi Badenoch kick things off on Sunday by setting out plans to leave the European convention on human rights (EHCR), it was hard to know what to focus on: the unhinged idea or remembering who exactly Badenoch was. Kimmy, is it? I’m trying to place her. Since being elected last November, the former engineer has turned being the leader of the opposition into a part-time job to the extent that you half expected conference to start with a missing person’s appeal.Still, she’s here now! And she’s making up for lost time. Badenoch’s pledge to get rid of the landmark Climate Change Act was dismissed as “catastrophic” by former prime minister Theresa May, business groups, scientists and the Church of England before delegates had even made it up the M40. Not that we should be worried. You can trust Badenoch’s scientific credentials. She thinks she was offered a place to study for a (pre) medical degree. And she’s not stopping at the climate. Badenoch wants you to know she’s up for a bonfire of treaties to curb immigration and protect Britain from “the radical Islamist ideology” and “values hostile to our own”. The Human Rights Act! Legal aid for migrants! Basic decency! Everything must go! Meanwhile, the shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, set out plans to cut social security spending by £23bn by limiting benefits to people with UK citizenship, removing it even from those who have been in the country for decades and have indefinite leave to remain. Asked by the BBC how such people could survive financially, Stride said: “If they’ve come from other parts of the world, they would have an option to return to those other parts.” It all rather has the air of your ex-boyfriend screaming incoherently on the driveway, begging for another chance. Suddenly, it’s very clear why you blocked his number. Badenoch will break convention on Wednesday by making a second leader’s speech at conference, not dissimilar to a supermarket 2 for 1 deal to offload out-of-date meat. With their number of MPs slashed from 365 to 121, two-thirds of local council seats wiped out, and Reform dominating in the polls, Tory conference 2025 is not so much a quest for relevance but a cry for help. Few cries were more repulsive than the promise to create a £1.6bn “removals force” based on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) currently dragging naked children from their beds in the US.Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

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