Jenrick tells Tory conference it’s ‘leave or die’ as he ramps up calls for UK to exit ECHR – UK politics live

Robert Jenrick is speaking at a Conservative Women’s Organisation fringe at the conference. He starts by saying the CWO is the world’s oldest female political organisation linked to a party.

He says he is reluctant to talk about men’s issues and women’s issues. But there are things the party does need to do to ensure it appeals to women, he says.

He says the party could hope for Labout to fail. But he wants the Conservative party to change.

In office, it achieved much, he says. But it must acknowledge its failures. It did not control the borders and lower taxes.

If the Tories accept their failings, and listen to the public, they can rebuild people’s trust.

He stands for change, he says.

Jenrick claims Badenoch’s ‘leave or amend’ approach to ECHR won’t work

Peter Walker

Robert Jenrick has used a campaign rally just outside the Conservative conference to paint the issue of migration in highly stark terms, saying his party will “die” if it does not commit to quitting the European convention on human rights. (See 8.23am.)

Speaking to supporters in a studio theatre at Birmingham Rep, Jenrick repeated his styling of the issue in Brexit terms, saying the choice was between the “leave” of leaving the ECHR or “remain” of staying in it, and that this was a chance to “get migration done”.

He again criticised opponents like Kemi Badenoch who have said they would first seek to change the way the convention works. He said:

This is more than just, ‘leave or amend’ – frankly, our party doesn’t have a future unless we take a stand and fix this problem. It’s leave or die for our party – I’m for leave.

Asked by reporters afterwards if this was not a bit hyperbolic, Jenrick rejected this. He said. “If we don’t take a stand on fixing illegal migration, restoring sovereignty to our people and our parliament, there isn’t a future for the Conservative party,” he insisted.

At the rally, which at times resembled a general election event with the crowd of placard-holding supporters standing behind Jenrick in the half-full hall, he took several swipes at party officials for not allowing him and the other leadership candidates more of a chance to speak inside the conference.

He also repeatedly placed the issue of leaving the ECHR as connected to crime and terrorism, saying that the country was not able to be safe if it could not deport overseas nationals convicted of serious offences who blocked their removal via the convention.

Asked if he was more explicitly linking migration and crime or terrorism, as done by Donald Trump, Jenrick rejected this.

Foreign national offenders in our country,who we have struggled to deport because of our membership of the European Convention on Human Rights – that’s the issue I was raising.

Jeremy Hunt ended his Q&A with Daniel Finkelstein by saying the Tories had to win back younger voters. He said:

What is the biggest challenge we face as a party?

Our biggest strategic challenge is the fact that the average age above which you are more likely to vote Conservative than Labour is now over 60.

If we are the party of aspiration, we have to have a message for 30-somethings, 40-somethings, starting out on their life, who are prepared to work hard, who are conservatives to their fingertips, in their values, in the way they lead their lives, in their belief in all the things that all of us believe in.

We have to have a message that appeals to them.

So I would say, as we rebuild our trust with the British people, a litmus test of whether we are on track is whether we are starting to do things that rebuild confidence, trust and excitement amongst those generations, because they’re not just the future of the country, they’re the future of our party as well.

This chart, from a More in Common election analysis, illustrates the point Hunt was making about the crossover point, the age at which people are more likely to vote Tory than Labour. More in Common says it was 62 at the last election. In 2019 it was 39.

Q: Do you accept claims from groups like the Resolution Foundation that any party would find it hard to cut tax now?

Hunt says cutting taxes would be a challenge. But he says countries with lower tax have higher growth.

He says he is worried that welfare reform will now be “untouchable” for the Labour partly because of the backlash to the decision to cut the winter fuel payments.

My worry about the last 12 weeks is Labour have got themselves so badly burnt with the mess they’ve got into over winter fuel allowance that welfare reform will now become untouchable for them.

If they worried about a battle with the Labour party on benefits paid to pensioners, including wealthier pensioners, you can imagine what a challenge it would be to cut the bill for working-age disabled people, which is due to increase by £25bn a year over the next five years. It’s a huge, huge increase.

He says the bill for benefits for working age disabled people is due to increase by £25bn over the next five years. That is an area where there is a crucial need for reform, he says. But he claims Labour will not address this.

Jeremy Hunt, the shadow chancellor, is speaking at the conference hall now. He is being interviewed by Daniel Finkelstein, the Times columnist and Tory peer.

Hunt says Rachel Reeves’ claim that the Tories left the worst economic inheritance since the war is one of “the biggest lies” told by Labour.

He says he would have died to have had the legacy Reeves had when he took over.

He says a Freedom of Information Act inquiry by the Financial Times recently showed the Treasury was unwilling to justify its claim that there is a £22bn black hole in the public finances.

UPDATE: Asked if he agreed with Labour’s claim that the state of the economy will get worse before it gets better, Hunt said:

They will get worse if Labour makes catastrophic mistakes in the budget and hikes up tax in a way that destroys growth.

I think one of the biggest lies we’ve had since Labour came to office is this nonsense about having the worst economic inheritance since the second world war …

You don’t have to take my word for it, I mean just read this week’s Economist where there’s an article saying that [Reeves] could have actually not have a black hole of £22bn but a surplus of £39bn.

Hunt was referring to this Economist article. Here is an extract.

The reality is more nuanced. The Tories did plenty to mute growth and muddle the public finances. But Ms Reeves has more wriggle room than she has let on. The constraints she faces on tax are largely self-imposed. Even the £22bn black hole is something of a mirage. Perhaps around half was truly unforeseeable: troubling cost overruns on the asylum system and more. But, as one-offs, these don’t affect Britain’s fiscal position much. The other half—pay bumps for public-sector workers—will have a fiscal impact but were no surprise …

Jeremy Hunt, Ms Reeves’s predecessor, left Britain with £8.9bn in “fiscal headroom”, the amount of borrowing permitted before the government violates its fiscal rules. Since then gilt yields have fallen, growth has been strong-ish and another fiscal year has passed, which rolls the five-year target on by another year. That should push Britain’s fiscal headroom up once the OBR updates its forecasts. Capital Economics, a consultancy, reckons it will hit £22bn.

With tweaks, that headroom could rise further still. One sensible move would be to exclude the Bank of England’s losses from quantitative easing from the definition of public debt used for the fiscal rules. Doing so would push headroom up by another £17bn, to £39bn.

Talking of Nigel Farage, yesterday the Reform UK leader posted a thread on social media attacking the two favourites to be next Tory leader. He said Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch cannot be trusted on immigration.

Conservative Party Conference begins in earnest tomorrow.

Until now, I have refrained from intervening in the upcoming leadership election — but the time has come.

Kemi Badenoch has spent weeks positioning herself as tough on immigration.

But in 2018 she campaigned in Parliament to increase legal migration, and was the biggest champion for students bringing in dependents.

I don’t believe a word that she says on anything.

Formerly a man that believed in nothing, Robert Jenrick now pitches himself as the great hardliner.

This is almost certainly done for political gain and not out of conviction. He will divide the party.

I doubt that Jenrick will last long if he wins.

The Conservative Party is split down the middle and the brand is completely broken.

Why are Farage’s views relevant? Because, if they had the option, a large number of Tory members would probably vote for him as leader. According to a survey of members by ConservativeHome carried out after the election in July, 36% of members favour an electoral pact with Reform UK at the next election, 12% favour a full merger, and only half of them would rule out any form of deal or pact.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is backed by more voters as having the qualities needed to be a good prime minister than any of the four Tory leadership candidates, according to new polling by Ipsos reported in the Standard.

But voters are also far more likely to say Farage does not have the qualities needed to be a good PM than any of the Tory candidates, the same polling shows.

Looking at net scores on this measure (those who say they would be a good PM, minus those who say they would not), Farage does worse than all the Tory leadership candidates – although the only one, Tom Tugendhat, has a big lead over him.

According to the Ipsos figures, Farage has 24% of people saying he would be a good PM, 62% saying he wouldn’t, giving him a net score of -38.

Robert Jenrick is the next worse on this measure. Some 10% think he would be good, 47% say he wouldn’t, giving him a net score of -37.

Kemi Badenoch’s ratings are similar. Som 11% think she would be good, 45% say she wouldn’t, giving her a net score of -34.

James Cleverly has most positive support of the four leadership candidates, with 15% saying he would be a good PM. But 46% say he wouldn’t, making a net score of -31.

Tom Tugendhat has 12% of people saying he would be good. But, perhaps because he is less well known than the others, only 37% say he would be a bad PM, making a net score of -25.

Richard Fuller, the Conservative party chair, has ruled out changing the timetable for the leadership contest so the new leader can be in place in time for the budget on Wednesday 30 October.

Yesterday Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat both said they wanted the end date brought forward. Kemi Badenoch has said she is happy with the schedule already agreed.

It has been reported that senior figures in the party are talking about cutting the time allocated for the members’ ballot, so the new leader can respond to the budget.

But Fuller told BBC Breakfast today the timetable would not change. He said:

We had this debate some months ago. I think we had a very long discussion between the voluntary party and the 1922 Committee, which represents MPs.

The 1922 Committee wanted a longer campaign. They wanted to have four candidates here at conference.

And the logistics of that mean that when we whittle it down to two and it goes to the members, there’s a period of time for the members to vote, and my job is to make sure that members have enough time to get their ballot papers and return their ballot papers, and that’s why we ended up with the time frame we have.

Asked if that meant “no change”, Fuller replied: “No change.”

Labour has called for an investigation into £75,000 of donations to Tory leadership contender Robert Jenrick, saying it had “serious concerns” about the money’s ultimate origin, PA Media reports. PA says:

Jenrick, the frontrunner for the Conservative leadership, received three donations of £25,000 in July from The Spott Fitness, a fitness coaching app provider.

As first reported by the Tortoise news website, the company’s latest accounts show it has no employees, has never made a profit and has more than £300,000 of debts, and in January it registered a loan from Centrovalli, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands.

The ownership of companies registered in the British Virgin Islands is not made public, leading Labour to question where the money donated to Jenrick ultimately came from.

Party chair Ellie Reeves said in a letter to the Electoral Commission: “Donations to MPs must come from sources registered in the UK. It is clear that Mr Jenrick has serious questions to answer about the origin of these funds and their legality.”

A source close to Jenrick’s campaign dismissed Labour’s request as “nonsense”, saying it served to “prove who Labour fear the most”.

Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, Jenrick insisted no laws had been broken. He said: “As I understand it, this is a fitness company that operates in the UK. It’s a perfectly legal and valid donation under British law and we’ve set it out in the public domain in the way that one does with donations.”

Good morning. The Conservative party conference is essentially a four-day hustings event this year, but there are hustings within hustings and some of the most important are the Q&As taking place on the main conference stage. This afternoon Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat are up; tomorrow it’s Robert Jenrick and James Cleverly.

There is not a lot of non-leadership action at the conference, but today we’re also getting Liz Truss, the former PM, and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor she brought in to repair the damage caused by her mini-budget. It will be interesting to see what sort of reception Truss gets. The conference slogan is “review and rebuild”, and yesterday there was a session in the conference hall devoted to the general election. But, when talking about why they lost, there are almost no Tories willing to admit the obvious – which is that between 2019 and 2022 and party gave up governing properly and instead decided to stage a ‘Who can be the worst prime minister ever?’ contest, and that as a result its poll ratings dropped like a stone. None of the four leadership candidates are addressing this.

But this morning Jenrick, the bookmakers’ favourite in the contest, is talking about the European convention on human rights. He is the only candidate firmly committed to withdrawal and he has got a new slogan to publicise this. Co-opting the spirit of Brexit, he is telling members it’s leave or remain. (Jenrick, of course, voted remain in 2016; at that point he was a Cameroon centrist, not a rightwing Brexiter.)

In a story for the Daily Telegraph, Ben Riley-Smith has extracts from what Jenrick will say on this at a rally this morning. Jenrick will tell Tories that it’s not just leave or remain; it is leave or die for the party.

Our party’s survival rests on restoring our credibility on immigration. If we continue to duck and dance around this question our party has no future.

Despite what others might falsely claim, we’ve never had a legal cap on legal migration. Unless we introduce one – where no visas will be issued unless net migration is in the tens of thousands or lower – we will be powerless to end the cycle of broken promises. Anyone who is not prepared to commit to a specific cap just doesn’t understand the depth of public anger.

I am not prepared to gamble the house on some five-year review process that may or may not see us doing what is obviously necessary. I have a plan ready now: leave the ECHR and introduce a legally binding cap on legal migration.

The choice is clear, it’s leave or remain. In fact it’s more than that – it is leave or die. If we don’t do this now, we’ll never restore the public’s trust and there’s every chance that Reform will grow and grow and condemn us to obscurity.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Robert Jenrick is due to speak at a conference rally.

9.30am: Jeremy Hunt, the shadow chancellor, takes part in a Q&A on the conference stage.

9.50am: Members debates take place, covering immigration, free speech, housebuilding and the economy. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, is speaking.

10.30am: Jenrick takes part in a Q&A at a Conservative Women’s Organisation fringe. At 11.15 Kemi Badenoch is taking part in a Q&A.

10.45am: Michael Gove, the former levelling up secretary, takes part in a Q&A at an IPPR North and Onward fringe.

11am: Jenrick speaks at a European Research Group fringe.

12.30pm: Liz Truss, the former PM, takes part in a Q&A at a fringe meeting.

2pm: Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat take part in a Q&A on the conference stage.

2pm: James Cleverly takes part in a Q&A at a a Conservative Women’s Organisation fringe.

3pm: Cleverly takes part in a Q&A at on Onward fringe.

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