Kemi Badenoch's Battle of Ideas

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2:03And we're looking out for Chris Mason who is working his way through the maze of this convention sensor and we'll join us on that empty stool at some point. But let's just expand on why we've chosen those words. So I say political because a lot of this was about the framing and positioning of the conservative party against its political rivals and there was policy in there for sure, but the theme overall I think was quite a political theme. Yes, because in contrast to Andy Burnham who really only talked about what he wanted to do last week and didn't talk about any of his opponents really, Kemi Bade and Ock kind of went right at the table like a lot of focus on Labour, a lot of focus on reform UK and the mention of the others. And the reason I said extensive was we're a long way behind or we left behind this world where the conservatives didn't have any policies, which was about a year, 18 months ago. And now she's got a long list of pledges that she will put into her next manifesto and you saw that in the speech because the rousing peroration at the end on the auticube was titled something for everybody. And she listed basically everyone in society and then linked them with the policy that

3:04the conservatives have got to appeal to them. And then she did say we've got something for everybody. So it wasn't some kind of like secret message hidden in the auticube. No, no, she said it was an express it. And we will tell you what other messages Kemi Badeau had for her party here in Birmingham on this episode of newscast. Newscast. Newscast from the BBC. Humanity's next great voyage begin. I don't know the prime minister is Mike. I'm Andy and I'm not looking my best right now. I see that he was just a mirror of a town. Oh, Lord. Thinking about it like a panter helped. And what will you do? Stir it all up. Do we play music now? What will we do? Hello, it's Adam at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham. And it's Alex at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham. It's a slightly breathless press jumping into my onto my stool. Do you see how I tanked that? So you wouldn't even have time to catch your breath. I wanted the real drama. It was so, that was very lovely for you, Adam. That's the thing I like to capture the actual physicality of these conferences, which is people running up and down a lot of stairs and they've... Here are a lot of stairs at this conference centre. Chris, you've had time to think about it now. How would you sum up Kemi Badeau's not-speech in one word?

4:07We went for extensive and political. Oh, it's this game again. Yes, it's a classic now. Hang on a minute. Yes, I said extensive last week. I couldn't have been able to be so extensive or expansive. I thought you said expansive. No, I think I said extensive. Although I mean either would sort of... I'll cut one word. You see, I would say in her image. DASH, dash. Yes. Can you help me find out that's a party in her image? DASH, dash, dash. It's interesting you say that because actually having not been here for the whole thing, and only being here today, the main message you get, sort of drummed into you from the second you walk in the door of the venue, is this is Kemi Badeau's party. And if you want to be in it, you've got to play by her rules. Yeah, completely. I thought as I was listening to it, particularly the sort of glee and venom, depending on the passage in which she spoke about reform UK. Yeah. You remember that old line, and we've talked about this on Newcastle before, that's a lint in Crosby, the conservative strategist, Wizard of Oz as sort of dubbed him. I think he was seen to be the author of the phrase,

5:07taking the barnacles off the boat, about ensuring a party didn't go into an election with bits of policy that would just cause them a lot of grief. I think she feels like she's scraped the reform barnacles off the conservative boat, you know, that Robert Jenrick, Serella Bravenman and others have gone. Outwardly, conventionally, when a party loses MPs to defections, it is good news for the arriving party and bad news for the departing one. I mean, arguably the arrival of Serella Bravenman and Robert Jenrick to reform was good news for them, but Kemi Badeau not absolutely of the view, it was good news for the conservative. So the parties in her image, the party is absolutely behind her, there's zero questions internally about her leadership, but of course that's not the same thing. And she acknowledged this and that comparison she made with the conservative brand and the Marx and Spence's brand. She acknowledged that, you know, there's a way to go in terms of popularity. And the sound bite was the conservative parties had an export boom in drama queens. Yeah, talking about the conservative former MPs, who are now reform MPs and that got a little chuckle in the hall,

6:10unsurprisingly. In 2024, voters gave their verdict on the rouse, the plots and the infighting. Remember all that drama? That's gone. The conservatives have had an export boom. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE You have had an export boom of drama queens going to reform. APPLAUSE And Alex just expand on what Chris was saying about her comparison with MNS. Yeah, it was interesting that it was MNS. I thought that was quite appropriate for a conservative party. There'd be not for MNS. Comparison, no, but coming from Kemi Badeau. I mean, treat as we record at lunchtime, whether or not MNS might have anything to say. Yeah. Or whether she ran it past them first. Well, yeah, what's the thing is that the back story says is that she'd been invited to MNS' first ever catwalk show at London Fashion Week, which we should go. Yeah, and that's how she started this sort of anecdote and comparison.

7:12But then she went on to say that not so long ago MNS was effectively out of fashion and considered a bit dated and a bit past it. And maybe it's had its day. I'm paraphrasing what she said, but that was the sentiment. And then she's there. And now look at MNS, they're back in fashion, suggesting that there was some sort of parallel to be drawn with a conservative party, which echoed another comment that she made saying, we are not written off yet. So it's this idea about her attempting to reshape or rebrand the conservative party in her image to Chris' point. And she thinks that that can become an attractive proposition again. This has got my metaphor neurons fired. Oh, I don't know. I was just going to say this last time. We had a Vita last week, and I will return to that theme in terms of the staging of the speech. I want to, you're taking the MNS metaphor. So MNS kind of lost its way a bit. But then it's like a meal deal here. Well, yes. We could probably even get one. But I'm just going to come back here. But then it doubled down on food. And in this metaphor is that Brexit, because the conservative party under Boris Johnson became the party,

8:12we will deliver Brexit. That's what we're here for, and not a lot else. And then they've had to expand back into the areas where they thought they were good before. So you'll be honest with Chris. So you're taking that like, Kenny Badernaulk has brought back ladies fashion to the Conservative party. Tights and bras. Yeah. Everything. It's a department store now, as opposed to a shop. A whole lot of Brexit. Something for everyone. If we allow us, there's a momentary step away from the specifics of MNS. In essence, and there's nothing implicit about it. It is explicit. It's just acknowledging that the revival of the brand, the party brand, is still a working progress. She kind of has to acknowledge that. She's acknowledged that publicly and privately, because the numbers tell a story, don't they, in the opinion polls, they're attracting about a faith roughly of the electorate in their direction at the moment. But they take some comfort, a lot of comfort, from... I've lost count actually, the number of conversations I've had this week where people have been obsessing. Did I say this yesterday? I don't know, I'm not saying a tipping point.

9:14Well, there's the tipping point, but there's something underlying, the tipping point, which is the polling that points to the most and least hated parties. And when you look at some conservative polling, there's the right... At the moment, they're attracting about 20% in the polls, there's another 20, 22, 23%, who are willing to say that they could possibly consider the conservative party again. And obviously, that's the space. They're the people who might be sort of adjacent or willing to give them a listen, that they hope are the recipients of the messaging today and think, OK, maybe. That's the aim. And in our electoral system, that's important, because if you're in a constituency where you want to stop labor or you want to stop reform, quite often it is the party that's the least unpopular that benefits from that when it comes to tactical voting. Right, let's talk about... I mean, there was loads of things in the speech in terms of where the party's kind of policy handbook is now. And we've covered a lot of those things as they come out over the last few days and over the last few months. And as we were just saying, there was a big long list at the end of the speech.

10:15But the rabbit at the hat, terrible cliche alert, was, Chris, you were right about inheritance tax. But Alex, it wasn't as simple as, I'm going to abolish inheritance tax, which is what some people had been predicting. All cut the right, which was another element of a prediction. No, it was a different approach to it. And it wasn't totally abolishing it. And the reason for that was the argument that Kemi Bade not going to her party were attempting to make, which is, we want to cut taxes, but we'll only do it when we can afford to. So it's that thing about, we are a tax-cutting party, but we're also going to be really responsible with the public finances and not go too far. So what she said was that they would effectively abolish inheritance tax on properties that you want to pass on to your children, or your grandchildren. So at the moment... Your family home. Your family home. So if you want to hand on your family home to the generations that come after you, you won't pay any inheritance tax on that. Whereas at the moment, if you have assets worth over a certain amount, and your family home, if you're not passing, if you're not passing, it's your spouse can form part of your overall asset base, that's terrible language.

11:16But you know, you might tip into an inheritance tax threshold. So she wants to effectively take the family home out of inheritance tax, so you can pass it down tax-free. They are where we gather every Christmas to put up the same decorations. Passing on your home to your family is one of the most human instincts of all. So conference, the next Conservative government will legislate, so nobody will ever pay inheritance tax on their family home. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Which got, as you would expect, a resounding cheer from the Tory party faith through it in the hall, because, you know, even though a fraction of the states actually pay inheritance tax, less than 5% of the states end up paying inheritance tax while people end up paying inheritance tax, it's an unpopular notion. And Keny Baker not has herself before, says she thinks it's morally wrong, this idea that, in her view, you effectively get taxed twice, tax wants to earn the money to pay for your family home,

12:16and then tax again when you pass it down to your family. So well-trailed, expected, but still, I think, landed very well with the Conservative party as you might expect. Yeah, and an interesting riff when she was trying to land that point in the speech, where she pointed to three elements relating to housing. So she pointed to the stamp duty announcement, which was the equivalent moment a year ago in Manchester, where, as journalists were following the scripts that had been released for the speech in advance, but there was a page missing at the end. A year ago, it was about stamp duty in England and Northern Ireland, there are broadly similar but different schemes in Wales and Scotland. That was the Conservative crowd pleas last year. This year, the stuff on inheritance tax. If you also throw in what is often dubbed the mansion tax and the Conservative's idea that they would get rid of this council tax surcharge that Labour will apply from 2028, I think it is, to properties worth two million pounds or more. They can make a sort of triplicate point about housing and the tax burden.

13:17What is interesting is that even before this announcement, because it was wildly expected something was coming on in heritance tax, reform in particular, suspect Labour will do it as well, but reform in particular, were leaping on this saying, this is a dividing line, we're happy to lean into in the words of reform as we record, it's a tax cut for multi-millionaires, that's how they're going to badge it. And they say that they, as they announced a couple of weeks ago, would cut income tax for people by rating the point at which you start paying income tax. The personal allowance to the people. In other words, helping workers rather than getting a job. And they're arguing, is your helping if our broader swath of the population than you are by cutting inheritance tax? Lib Dems are the similar portion, isn't they? A few weeks ago, about the personal allowance. So you can see in here the tax debate raging now. So just to be really clear on the details then, so, can we be beaten up today, says the Conservative government would exempt the family home from any inheritance tax at all. So you could pass that on to your children after your death with no inheritance tax. Currently, the kind of the maximum value of a family home that can be passed on

14:21without inheritance tax is half a million. No, I don't think that's quite right. So my understanding at the moment is that the inheritance tax threshold is £325,000. So if you've got more than that, then you are liable to pay inheritance tax. And the stuff above that. Yeah, on the stuff above that. Now, when it comes to the family home, you can pass it to your partner, you'll see your partner or your spouse without paying inheritance tax. You can pass it down to your children, and that increases the inheritance tax threshold to half a million pounds. And then, anything above that, you start paying inheritance tax. So I think the proposal from Kevin Baderock is that you take the family home out of that equation. And then there'll still be thresholds around which you start paying inheritance tax on your other assets, but not the family home if you want to pass it down to your partner. And so that would mean that in addition to the passing down of the home, you would then have as a couple a combined allowance of a million pounds, £500,000 each, into which other assets would be ringed.

15:21I see because George Osborne, former Tory Chancellor, says that his changes to inheritance tax effectively increase the inheritance tax threshold to a million pounds when he was Chancellor, using all those ways, but that includes the family home. So this is basically making a million pounds and accepting the family home altogether. And I got there in the end. It's taken me a while. And that is how, and this is their language, but that is how reform can suggest its tax cuts per multi-millionaires, because if you have a property that could be worth potentially, you know, millions, into the millions, plus the additional other assets, then that's quite a lot. Yeah. And she was also making the case that the reason she's not scrapping it altogether or cutting the rate is because she wants to be prudent with the public finances and stick to her so-called gold and financial rule. The golden rule, which means very every penny or pound that she saves, they also has to pay the equivalent amount of the national deficit. So that is why she's trying to sort of make this twin argument. I think the framing and the pitching of this is also really interesting,

16:23because if you take the sort of collective announcements through the conference, so extending free childcare to people learning over 100 grand, getting rid of the so-called mansion tax, now you've got this on inheritance tax, you know, the criticism of the party and the one that reform you pay are all is already advancing, is this idea about, you know, you're all for the rich people aren't, you know, what's for everybody else? Can we bade a knock during that speech? Was very careful and deliberate, I thought, to attempt, and people will have their own view of how this actually is interpreted, but attempt to frame this as a sort of middle class. So she was suggesting that inheritance tax was introduced for the very wealthy to try and skim a bit off the richest people's estates to put it into the public purse, but she was saying that because of the way that it's worked over the years, you get a lot of, in her words, middle class families who are being sucked into that, the same sort of argument that she was attempting to make around the childcare decision, saying that actually the cliff edge at £100,000 means the henries in the jargon, so hyenas not rich yet. Those kind of people are getting sucked into these, losing some of these benefits, tax benefits,

17:24will charge her benefits, whatever it might be, and she was attempting to say that's who she's going for, which is really the kind of voter the conservative party is just trying to win and woo back. I mean, people will have their own interpretation of whether or not they think that's right, but her the argument she's advancing on that is quite interesting. Yeah, and those who aspire to be well enough off one day that they could fall within its remit, and hence, in other words, talking to those who would tell an opinion policy of thinking her to the status is terrible, even though on their current sort of bank balance, and kind of, you know, housing situation or whatever, wouldn't fall within it. And yeah, her making that argument that the mega rich already don't pay its because of all sorts of, you know, tax receipts and all that kind of stuff. Plus her jibet, the headline making squillianaires leaving the UK and saying it's because of the tax burden. Chris, I'm aware you've got a train to catch. I'm going to catch the next one. Oh, thanks. All right, all for news. Like flexible tickets. That's the kind of guy I am, you know, who's connected to the name.

18:24Committed to podcasting. The budget bus leaves regularly. The framing of the speech, we sort of touched on this a bit already, but she started off by saying there's a battle for the soul of the nation. I was then expecting a kind of like curious storm of speech from last year, where you talked about, oh, the risk of racism on our streets is really high. And I thought, and the reason I thought that was because Kimmy Baderock has talked a few times this week about her fears for her children who are a mixed race and she doesn't want them having to watch TV and then her explain to them why some people don't think they're English. And so I thought she was going to go down that road in quite a big way. And it was going to be quite a sort of identity-based battle that she was talking about. A sort of kind of quite scary thing. Actually ended up being her battle is the battle of ideas between classic left, Andy Burnham and classic right, she thinks her. Yeah, and it's enthusiastically leaning into that. They think that that is a useful argument for them to have. They think Andy Burnham is a more primary colours debater who is more willing to entertain,

19:29as they would see it, classic left wing ideas and language as opposed to, what a critic would see as the kind of more processy approach of Kia Starma. And they think there's absolutely managing that argument. Although it is worth saying, and that was the framing of it, I've just nearly dropped my phone, sorry, that was the first question. That was Chris' role last week. Yeah, it was a credit stack around. Anyway, I just caught up with you, Kasper, that little video of me going one way and getting lost and then coming back another. Yeah, thanks for that. That was the best bit. Yeah, I'll watch you back. Yeah, I mean, she's available on YouTube. Leaning into this sort of left right division all the way through this conference, and if you were to boil it down in a horribly simplistic fashion, but it was effectively her argument is the conservatives are low tax, small state, and the labourer are high spent high tax. And that's the kind of thing. But, and that was the framing of this battle of ideas. But the bit that she got really enthused about, and actually the audience in the hall got the most enthused about, was when she did talk about reform UK, and some of its members who are talking about what is Englishness.

20:31And she did reference her children. And she said about this notion about there needs to be some sort of form of uniting the political right. And she was quite personal about reform UK and some of its members and said, we are not uniting with that in her words. And there was a massive cheer in the room for that. I don't want to explain to my son when we're watching our brilliant England team play football for 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. 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. Reform MPs are openly questioning people's identity. They are not like us. We are not like them. We are different. We are the Conservative Party. Yeah, the framing was the bigger picture about the kind of political left versus political right. But the bit that I think it just felt like it had the most resonance in the room

21:33was when she made that argument about we are not getting into beds for one to the better place. Yes, this is the argument that Englishness is an ethnicity rather than a civic identity. And the argument that you might have been born in England and be British but not be English. We saw originally seen at the former Prime Minister make a passionate argument against that case that we've seen so well at Bravaman and a few others make in the Sunday Times a couple of weeks ago and there was Kenny Baidnock doing it very passionately and very personally. Should we talk about some of the theatricality? You know that's my favourite bit of the analysis for my extended riff on Evita from the Labour Party conference. Was there a musical this put you in mind of? Well, all these politicians now leaning into the live entrance from backstage. And so Andy Burnham did a little bit of it last week and that's what I was seeing was a bit like the production of a Vita where Evita was on the balcony outside the theatre. Beamed in. Comparison Alerts. Coming. Can we be able to do the really what was that sorry?

22:34Comparison Alert coming. I just feel it was more of the same. And like Kenny Baidnock did the same backstage walk like she was at an awards show but just longer. The one thing that did get me on the sort of production side of this was that that little video that always gets played to rouse all the people in the hall. We never play out because it is effectively a kind of party propaganda video and every single party does one and whatever. What really struck me about that one was that there was a lot of focus on Kenny Baidnock's Prime Minister's questions and even during her speech there was a lot of talk about the work that she thought the Conservatives had done in opposition and the reason I thought both of those things were interesting is because the Conservatives are the official party of opposition but there is a question because of the way that reform UK has been positioned in the opinion polls whether or not they can retain that you know are they seen as the main party of opposition on the right interesting that she was really pointing to the stuff that she thought had done that made them an effective opposition and the PMQ stuff is interesting because there are so many people in the party who a year or so ago or 18 months ago were not convinced by Kenny Baidnock's leadership

23:35and there were still lots of questions about whether or not she was the right person at the helm of the party and could cut through and have a real impact and it has been her performance at Prime Minister's questions that a lot of the Conservatives MPs point to and say hang on that's what changed my mind I like how she's dealing with PMQ's their parties clearly she's trying to go hi hi yes look look at me on I on a good in that format you know completely that and I think the other thing is you know when when reform were really riding high in the polls and Kenny Baidnock was struggling and she wasn't particularly visible at the time I had senior Conservatives say to me you know we're doing the daily slog of being the official opposition you know which is being there for every statement responding to every detail as exactly what the official opposition is there to do by the way but normally the official opposition is also by definition the most prominent alternative party and of course for a while they weren't and they were going through that slog Nigel Farage and Reform were making huge waves principally outside of Parliament not least because they've only got a handful of MPs but yeah I think you write Alex we saw in that video her leaning into I mean not least because she's got a lot better

24:40at it she knows that and people who are watching every week know that in terms of enjoying it reveling in it working out how to do it in fact it's an it's an our openness isn't it if newscast a little bit of music where she talked about the punch and duty of it the theatre yeah but actually Lauren she told us she'd learned to do that so yeah yeah and and then reveling in that now in a way that not long ago it that wouldn't have been the case can I tell you about two historical echoes so one of the other videos they played in the very very very long build up to Kenny Badenock speech which also involved every single member of the shadow cabinet being announced one by one I missed it I couldn't get in the hall sorry good for who's who the party was a little reminder but before that there was a video of some of the new candidates that the party have selected which is quite controversial because some old timers have been excluded because they're not sufficiently Badenock asked anyway that reminded me of the 2009 Conservative Party conference so the last one before the 2010 election and David Cameron was making a whole big thing of

25:44I've changed the Conservative Party Luke how I could change the country I've brought all these new people on boards to the stuffy old conservatives and I was doing a piece for the daily politics to try and illustrate this and I spoke to Conservative HQ and I said point me in the direction of the person that illustrates this the most and I will interview them and they put forward a young candidate for a seat in South London completely unwinnable called Kemi Adagokki and it was Kemi Badenock before she got married and before she then became obviously leader of the Conservative Party so that's a little echo there I was it's a don't let you know yeah it's up against Tessa Jowell's old seats where she met her husband yes who was in the local Conservatives party yeah maybe in the chair of the local party yeah and it just reminds me that one of the things one of the tools you've got are you're disposable when you're opposition leader is changing your own party and then making that part of your pitch second echo have you seen the pictures that the Conservatives released overnight of Kemi Badenock preparing for her speech yeah so there's one person yeah she's happy I know and there's one where she's got her laptop on the piano she's typing away on the piano and then there's a wider show where she stood at the piano in bare feet I think that is a callback to a

26:48famous picture of Margaret Thatcher where she's in Downing Street and she's curled up on the sofa with her shoes off and she's in her bare feet so not to sound like a weird Conservative foot fetishist but there is a sort of thing well I mean there's a callback to Thatcher well also she's not she's not shining away from The Thatcher comparisons because that big long essay that she wrote she very deliberately said very similar to the policy document that was produced the thinking document that was produced ahead of Margaret Thatcher's Premiership so entirely possible that your echoes of former Conservatives are liars that's a lot of right no I'm entirely convinced is what I meant to say that I'm entirely convinced yeah also on that note and Chris you had a copy of her her book is it called the right approach the right way the right way yeah and it was flying off the shelves of the shop down there when all the young Tory suited activists came over and as I said that that was absolutely sold to us with the comparison with the right approach which was the Sir Keith Joseph document in the in the mid mid to late 70s trying to set out the kind

27:49of philosophical underpinning of a as they hoped for a dreamed future Conservative government after 1979 elections so there's the they're absolutely keen to lean to lean into that she would describe herself as an old school conservator yeah yeah she's that's what she's kind of acknowledging like her saying Andy Brunnerbs an old school laborite yeah it's interesting there because on this whole framing of the speech of her I actually bumped into the shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith just as he was coming off a round of interviews immediately after Kenny Bode's speech just a minute ago and he knew I was about to come and chat to you guys and he said with all of the conversation and all that he said this isn't just for the wealth he said don't forget about the cuts and national insurance for young people and they are they are leaning on that quite a lot I think in terms of this idea of broadening the offer and trying to make this not because because as much as they're happy for the comparisons between this Kenny Bode not leadership and Margaret Thatcher all going back to our school conservatism and low tax small state and affluent middle classes and aspiring workers and all of that stuff they're happy with all of that you know but I think what they are conscious of is that there is also there's some chatter on the

28:54edges of this party conference about what's the offer for young people I mean they're saying there's a lot of young conservatives here but what are they offering them in terms of the pitch and that may be well why he's saying this is part of it we you know this focus on jobs so young people also just one other thing picking up on that because every paragraph you put in a speech is a choice so it's absence doesn't mean you don't believe the thing that you decided to put in and say but it means it's stayed in when lots of other things didn't make the cuts because these things go through multiple drafts and it was a relatively short paragraph a paragraph towards the end where she talked about her respect for people who work in the public sector and I just thought and now conservative leaders down the ages would say that they respect plenty of people who work in the public sector but her choice and decision to put that in and put it in explicitly and referring in particular I think to soldiers and to teachers and to doctors I just thought it's just interesting you know as we head towards the second half of a parliament and then who knows at what point there is an election trying to woo back some of those voters lost I guess particularly to perhaps the liberal democrats

29:55and others just just an interesting sort of weathervane and what was the example cameo bait and not gave to Laura on Sunday to illustrate her policy about ending the £100,000 cliff edge for free child care as an deputy head teacher who wants to apply for a promotion to be a head teacher but doesn't do it because they don't want to lose their free child care because they go over £100,000 also Alex on your point about the work the party is doing for young people I actually thought the most personal bit of her speech jointly with the bit where she was talking about her children and their identities and their her fears for them was when she was talking about what it was like being a graduate and how exciting it was to have the choice of do I want to do a boring job where I can earn loads of money or a more interesting job where I earn a bit less and the fact that there were options for all of her and her makes and I thought actually that was a very interesting framing about some people call it the crisis facing young people very different from oh is it an anxious generation as a benefit to a generous if you've got ADHD actually turning it into a thing about it's bringing back options for people yeah she sort of wasn't blaming young people for not

31:00having a job she was blaming the lack of jobs for young people not having a job or the choice and that is an interesting framing or that obviously what it butts up against is the fact they're taking a pretty hard starts on welfare and a sort of tough love approach on welfare which may well have an impact and we don't know yet because we don't know all the contours of it but on some of the support and benefits the young people get so that's you know and this is this package of things they've announced a couple of days ago which is you would not be able to go straight from school onto benefits because you haven't paid into the system yet because you haven't worked then if you can't find a job you get put on a work preparation program and then if you come out of that without a job the benefits you go on to are at quite a low level because the idea is you should be living at home with your parents and then the bigger picture argument that she says the broader prospectus would create a climate in which more jobs could be created the question is given the the last 20 years and where we've been with economic growth is I mean that's an open question is it how much difference could that make and how quickly right two curveball questions and their

32:03curveball no the curveball because they're from with with Chris is really keen to answer these conference sets there are two things that have happened or one thing that's happened and one thing that I've it's maybe mooted happening elsewhere Alex the the story about Alex she can go for us Alex Google's quick-leafness yeah your train is later the Chris yeah the story about reform and the so the twin tracks of that story of the channel forward news yeah undercover filming which they did with with another group of of campaigning journalists about the mooted five hundred thousand pounds donation from somebody who was living in America that he was going to root down through his son and they weren't real donors and then also some figures close to Nigel Farage at the top of the party commissioning polls getting those polls published but not badging numbers paid for commission by reform yeah so in the simplest terms really the allegations in that channel for undercover filming and the piece they produced around it was were senior figures in the party trying to secure foreign donations without following the proper rules and regulations around that and were they commissioning

33:07polls again without declaring them in line with the proper rules but after that all came out after that channel for investigation was broadcast there were two figures in that there was James Aure who was the party's head of policy and there was Dan Duke's who is in the short hand Nigel Farage's right hand man and had been for a very long time they both stepped down from their roles pending an internal investigation after all of that came about and reform has now said that that internal investigation has concluded and it found that neither two breached any rules or laws as far as they can tell this is reform's own internal investigation into these two characters there is separately a metropolitan police investigation looking into reform UK and again whether it's followed all of the rules relating to foreign donations but reform says that its investigation has cleared those two and Dan Duke's has said in a statement that he welcomes the findings of the investigation which crucially has found I did not break the law as I had maintained from the outset I'm considering all appropriate legal remedies in relation to any false and damaging statements made about me

34:10for now I'll continue to take a break from politics to pursue other opportunities we haven't yet heard as I understand it as we record from James Orl but we'll see what he has to say and as we're recording it's about quarter to two Chris here's your recall oh yeah I was chatting to I got out of it by reading out Dan Duke's suggestion for a while okay much as I do appreciate that that contribution um to make sure I covered coverage as fair and accurate um a former Labour cabinet minister who I bumped into yesterday said they were hearing that the spending review is going to be delayed and there was an idea that the spending review so when all the resources for the different government departments have puzzled out and we were due to get our first sense of how the government was going to increase defense spending it's not going to happen in the spring but might be happening later next year yeah so it was due to happen in the calendar year 2027 I suppose from what year comes next 2027 um if it's later in the year than earlier in the year

35:14which is where the smoke signal seems to be pointing you then get people and I had a senior conservative doing just that this morning I mean this is people putting two and two together and seeing what number they arrive at does that increase the likelihood or pointing the direction of an earlier election if you're sort of putting all of that stuff off I mean I mean who knows let's let's let's see but it does mean if it is later that as you say all of those questions and the stick that the conservatives love to be labored at the moment around fulfilling the chancellor's promise to in in in resigning as defense secretary to meet the sort of immediate needs as he sees it for defense in the next handful of years kind of gets postponed and the conservatives can carry on punching that's bruise it is also a little indicator that is this conference wraps up it's not the end of conferences in the Scottish National Party meet next week but parliament is back next week and we've not seen very much a parliament between the new prime minister and chemibade knock-and-off there's a couple of weeks before the break for most of the conferences and all of these questions

36:18will come rolling back won't the day-to-day at Westminster in the chamber yeah because the budget is in what 21 days 20 that seems three weeks or three weeks as we sometimes pull it you're talking to a man who has a running tally spreadsheet of my oh yeah a lot of data how many how many more how many 20 days to go and how many conferences don't have the number to hand i feel like a cabinet minister caught on the hop yeah where are your figures how do you not know like 100 and 100 and 150 now i think still a lot yeah yeah that should maybe be running home from Birmingham that was so fun the last remaining one magic day in one one go right um Alex lovely to catch up pleasure is ever Chris go and get your train thank you and that is all for this episode of newscast from the conservative party conference which is just closed in Birmingham in fact everyone has gone and everything seems to be packed up so i think it actually ended as we were recording that episode and there will be another newscast from the normal studio coming your way very soon bye bye newscast newscast from the BBC from one newscaster to another thank you so much for making it to

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