Kemi Badenoch’s eaten her words after a jolly in the Royal Albert Hall with billionaire praetorian Michael Ashcroft. Mocked mercilessly for branding sandwiches a breakfast snack and not proper food, then announcing she preferred steak but lunch is for wimps, Badenoch told a 1922 Committee reception at the Conservatives’ Manchester conference how Ashcroft served her sarnies. “He invited me on a hot date a few weeks back, to the Last Night of the Proms, where he fed me sandwiches,” she gushed. The megabucks donor and pollfather’s support is a crumb of comfort for a Tory leader stalked by Robert Jenrick, who wants to see more white faces in parts of Britain – including his own in the leader of the opposition’s office. Kemikaze relies on Ashcroft’s bread, the power-broker donating £250,000 since she became leader. Nigel Farage is courting Ashcroft without success and the zillionaire is a rare Badenoch fan, authoring a glowing biography. Snouts whisper he’d shut his wallet to the Conservatives should she be chewed up and spat out.
Poor Badenough was forced to play second fiddle all week to Margaret Thatcher. The Rusted Lady’s face and name were everywhere, to celebrate the centenary of her birth. Two suits and a coat were in glass cases. The official conference gift shop flogged Thatcher tat including £6.50 key rings and £15 mugs. Badenoch merch? None. Perhaps the party doesn’t want to be lumbered with unsellable stock should she be binned.
To the shootin’ and fishin’ fringe, where shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins also gave a big shout out to her local – legal, she maintained – huntin’ pink coats in Lincolnshire. “City-dwelling socialists,” moaned Atkins, didn’t appreciate “the joys of shooting”. Quite. Cotswolds grandee Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, who was kicked out of the 2019 Tory conference after clashing with security staff, moaned Labour was toughening shotgun laws. Urging the gathering to push back against the reds on countryside issues, his language was graphic. “Keep shooting at them and make sure the bullets hit them,” he advised. The nervous little gulp suggested Clifton-Brown’s brain hadn’t been fully engaged before he opened his mouth.
There was a pinch-me moment for activists at the Conservative Friends of Israel drinks. “Is it really her? Oh my God, it’s her,” they were heard exclaiming. The “her”? Twice-sacked former home secretary Suella Braverman. She was on Reform defection watch for months until the harder-right party branded her “too toxic”. Braverman’s hubby Rael quit Reform in protest and his wife has nowhere else to go.
Farage was the talk of Manchester,justas he was in Liverpool at Labour. Another name doing the Tory rounds was that of right whinger MP Rupert Lowe. A former cabinet minister boasted he and other Conservative colleagues are in close contact with a former Reformer too extreme even for Farage. “He’s a businessman, he’s a little red-faced and he sometimes says off-colour stuff. He’s exactly our sort of person!” they exclaimed. Lowe would be at home in a Jenrick party.
Badenoch interrupted her own 1922 speech when she spotted a ghost of Tory times past. “Is that Tim Montgomerie?” she asked. Indeed it was the veteran Tory wonk who last year jumped to Reform. Badenoch glowered. “It’s nice to see you, Tim,” she said, before acidly adding: “I didn’t mean that really.” Sad-faced Montie later told the New Statesman: “David Cameron was the only Tory leader who ever listened to me. But Nigel listens to me. He is genuinely fascinated by politics.” Badenoch could do with charm lessons from Farage.
Over at the Green Party conference in Bournemouth, the ex-Corbynista Matt Zarb-Cousin is ruffling feathers. A champion of Zack Polanski’s lurch to the left, Zarb-Cousin has been keen to assert his role in founding Greens Organise, a socialist campaign group. Some members, however, question whether Zarb-Cousin’s involvement warrants co-founder billing. In Bournemouth the group was keen to clarify that, while he was supportive of its founding, Zarb-Cousin has had no major organisational involvement since. The Greens are as fractious as any party.
The rentier class isn’t welcome in the Greens, members voting unanimously at conference to abolish them. Labour MPs were quick to jump on the policy. “I have no idea what such a policy might mean,” said minister Chris Bryant. Westminster newbie Callum Anderson retorted, “Abolishing landlords won’t build a single new home.” It may or may not be a coincidence that in a parliament with 85 landlords, three of the top five are Labour MPs: Gurinder Josan, Jas Athwal and Bayo Alaba. The Greens’ call would’ve delighted Labour’s founding father Keir Hardie. “No landlordism” was a central plank of his platform.
The funniest story of this conference season was told by Tory chair Kevin Hollinrake. Trying to persuade a woman to let him sell her house while running a property business, he cooed an oil-painting figure resembled Anthony Hopkins. “That,” she replied, “is my great grandmother.”
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This article appears in the 08 Oct 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The truth about small boats