Badenoch"s maternity pay comments show how "hopelessly out of touch" Tories are, TUC says Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, has issued a statement saying Kemi Badenoch’s comments about maternity pay (see 12.21pm) shows how “hopelessly out of touch” the Tories are. He said: The Conservative party leadership candidates are hopelessly out of touch and seem to be competing with one another to be the most unkind and nasty. Maternity pay in the UK is lower than in many other economies - forcing too many mums back from leave early. The Tories don’t appear to have any solutions for this country. All they have left is performative cruelty and division. Early evening summary Kemi Badenoch has had an awkward start to a party conference that may determine whether or not she can become party leader. A survey today confirmed that she is the clear favourite amongst party members (see 1.45pm). But Robert Jenrick is the bookmakers’ favourite, because it is assumed that Badenoch will not get enough support from MPs to make the final two. Voting in the Commons on Wednesday 9 October and Thursday 10 October will decide the two candidates on the ballot for party members, and Badenoch, who had 28 votes in the last ballot, needs to win the support of at least 13 more by 10 October, because with 41, you are guaranteed a slot in the final two. (There are only 121 Tory MPs, so the last three candidates cannot all get 41 or more.) Badenoch started the day by delivering hard-hitting message on Israel (fully supporting the attack on Lebanon – see 8.40am) and on immigrants (implying they should be excluded if they are not prepared to love Britain – see 8.50am). But then she appeared to suggest to an interviewer that maternity pay was excessive and, as the backlash mounted, she resorted to issuing two successive statements claiming she had been misreported. In the second statement, via video, she claimed she was not fazed by the row – but she looked as though she was. (See 5.32pm.) Badenoch has said “not all cultures are equally valid” when it comes to deciding who should be allowed into the UK, as she expressed her shock about “the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel”. Two Tory leadership candidates, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat, have publicly called for the party to cut short the contest, a move opposed by their rival Badenoch. The former Labour MP Rosie Duffield has said Keir Starmer has “a problem with women” and that the government is “more interested in greed and power” than in making changes to the country. Sunak urges Tories to abandon backbiting and squabbling Rishi Sunak ended his speech to Tory members with an appeal for unity. I do want to finish with one final ask of all of you. Whoever wins this contest, give them your backing. We must end the division, the backbiting, the squabbling. We mustn’t nurse old grudges, but build new friendships. We must always remember what unites us, rather than obsessing about where we might differ. Because we when we turn in on ourselves, we lose, and the country ends up with a Labour government. And you don’t need somebody else to buy you a pair of designer glasses to see that the shine is coming off Keir Starmer already. People can see Labour weren’t frank with them at the election, that Labour still believe that Whitehall knows better than you, that Labour are making the wrong choices for our country. But if we Conservatives are going to get back into office so that we can once more deliver for the British people, then our new leader is going to need your support. Sunak’s comments reflect the fact that backbiting and feuding have been a constant theme of Tory politics in recent years. YouGov polling out today says voters think the party is preoccupied with itself (see 1.04pm). But arguably, Sunak suffered less from infighting than other leaders. He was the only PM of the last four who was not forced out by Tory MPs. Sunak defends Tory record in government, but says: "We did not get everything right in office" Rishi Sunak told party members in his speech at a reception that there was a real buzz around the conference. He started with a joke: It’s such a hot ticket, I’m suprised Keir Starmer has not asked someone to buy him one. He said he would not be making a proper speech, because he wanted to leave the conference to the leadership candidates. But he said he wanted to thank members for what they do, and he apologised for the defeat. I am only sorry that your efforts could not deliver the results you deserved. “It wasn’t you,” a member shouted back. And he said the party had to learn the lessons from defeat: We did not get everything right in office. No government ever does, and we do now to reflect on that, but we should not forget what we have achieved these last 14 years. We must not and I know we will not let Keir Starmer rewrite history. Sunak said the last Labour government left a note saying it ran out of money. He said he restored the economy to stability, and brought inflation back on target. Socalists always run out of other people’s money to spend, he said. He said that was something Lord Alli was already finding out. How Badenoch is trying to quell maternity pay controversy Kemi Badenoch has released a video claiming that she has been misrepresented. In it, she also says that she is not rattled by the controversy over her maternity pay comments – although some may conclude she has released the video precisely because she is rattled. In the video, she claims to be “really pleased” about how her day has gone. She goes on to say there has been “a lot of misrepresenation about my views on immigration”. She said: I have very strong views on immigration. I set them out in my Telegraph piece today. But what I want people to understand is that we need to win back trust. We need to win back trust, rather than just throwing policy out there. This seemed to be a response to Robert Jenrick saying her plan for immigration would not work. (See 9.27am.) She added: And I think people are losing trust because so much of politics is broken. For instance, there’s a new thing that I’ve been seeing on social media about maternity pay and that I don’t want that. Of course that’s ridiculous. Of course I think maternity pay is important. But I was answering a different question. A journalist interrupts, and people think that they’ve got a gotcha. And those sorts of things don’t faze me. People can ask me all the tough questions they want. I will answer them. We need to make sure that we are honest and that we’re not being misrepresented about our view on immigration or maternity pay or whatever. You can watch Badenoch’s exchange with Kate McCann on Times Radio about maternity pay at 12.42pm. Although Badenoch was keen to steer the conversation on to the topic of regulation, she was directly asked about maternity pay several times by McCann and used the word “excessive” in that context. McCann even asked her to confirm that that that was what she was saying. Badenoch could have clarified at that point in the interview. But she didn’t, and instead talked about how things had “gone too far” in terms of regulation. (Statutory maternity pay is, by definition, set by regulation.) Politicians often need to clarify what they say in interviews, and generally people are quite understanding when that happens. But this attempt by Badenoch to row back is not particularly convincing because Badenoch does not seem to show any appreciation of the fact that she herself contributed to this misunderstanding (if that is what it was). Instead – as usual – her default defence strategy was to demonise the media. Recently, Badenoch talked about how she never made gaffes. She told a podcast: I never have gaffes, or apologising for something that I said, [saying] ‘Oh, that’s not what I meant.’ I never have to clarify, because I think very carefully about what I say. That boast hasn’t aged well. Labour has also put out a statement attacking Kemi Badenoch for her comments about maternity pay. Ellie Reeves, the Labour party chair, said: It is symptomatic of the Conservative party as a whole that this is the kind of intervention that one of their leadership contenders is coming out with. The Tories and their continuity candidates are completely unserious about the problems they inflicted on the country over 14 years of chaos and decline. Rishi Sunak is not scheduled to give a speech during the main conference proceedings, even though he is still party leader. But he is hosting what is described as a thank-you reception for party members at 5pm, and we are told he will be giving a speech at that event, at about 5.20pm. It will be his main contribution at the conference. Tory chair Richard Fuller says review of election should lead to members getting more say over policies and candidates Richard Fuller, the Conservative chair, told the conference in his speech that he has ordered a review of what happened at the election that will be more comprehensive than previous ones. He said it would give party members more say over policy making and candidate selection Describing how it would operate, he said: The review will be empowered to make recommendations for reform in all aspects of our party and will then oversee the implementation of those recommendations with real accountability on the party leadership to deliver. The review must equip the party to fight and win elections at all levels. It must modernise our campaigning. It must provide the training needed to upskill our activists. It must expand the voice of members in policy making. It must enhance the rights of local party members in the candidate selection process. And much, much more. In short, the review must revitalise our party and get it back to being the election winning machine it once was. The review will be chaired by Patrick McLoughlin, a former transport secretary, chief whip and party chair, and outgoing chair of the National Convention, Lord Booth. It will present initial findings on 2 November, when the new leader is being announced. In a news release, the party said the main themes of the review would be: 1) To determine the reasons for the Conservative party’s long-term performance in all nations and regions. 2) To assess how the party performed against different opposition parties, and how that should inform our future strategies. 3) To analyse how various elements of the campaign strategy (e.g. voter targeting, digital, volunteer engagement, communications/messaging) performed in practice and compared to the underlying plan. 4) To assess the role of the parliamentary party since 2010, and its impact on elections. 5) To assess the motivation, strength and organisation of volunteers and members in the 2024 election. 6) Review the process of composing the manifesto and the impact of policies in the campaign. 7) To make recommendations for change and improvement in every area of the party – the parliamentary party and other elected representatives, the voluntary party, and the professional organisation (including CCHQ). As the Telegraph reports, Tom Tugendhat delivered a jibe at Sue Gray, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, when speaking at a fringe meeting. He said: To be fair to Sue, she’s demonstrated that she really is an impartial civil servant. I mean, she, after all, brought down one prime minister who was a Conservative, and now she’s working on bringing down another one who happens to be Labour. I think she’s demonstrating the kind of political balance that we expect for the civil service, destroying political careers, wherever they may be found. Conservative MPs feel aggrieved that voters did not acknowledge their progress on achieving good water quality during the last election. Rebecca Smith, the new MP for South West Devon, said her constituents expect rivers and the sea “to be like a swimming pool at times” adding: “You’ve got a whole load of consumers who want to swim but don’t know how bad things were 20 years ago.” And the shadow environment minister Robbie Moore said he thinks people are angry about sewage pollution because the environment agency gives out too much data on sewage pollution. He explained: The real challenge has been because there has been so much campaigning on this particular issue that any risk that is highlighted through increased monitoring is deemed by everybody to immediately be a pollution incident, and it absolutely isn’t in most cases, actually. And therefore I think that comes down to making sure that there is a clarity on what data is being presented, and what is being put into the public domain, by not only the water company, but how regulators, particularly the Environment Agency, are presenting that data. That was something I was trying to raise with the Environment Agency when I was in the department. Moore also criticised the Labour government over the news, first broken by the Guardian, that ministers plan to cut the farming budget, which pays for cleaning up water, by about £100m a year. He said: The farming budget is incredibly important, and the rumours of the farming budget being reduced by £100m per annum will have huge negative consequences on the amount of subsidy that is able to be put into the improvement measures that we announced previously and were able to put in place as a Conservative government. Badenoch team claims "selective quotes" being used to attack her Kemi Badenoch’s campaign has claimed her rivals are using “selective quotes” to attack her. As PA Media reports, a person close to Badenoch’s campaign said that “infighting and internal conflicts helped take our party to an historic defeat” and accused other candidates of seeking to “score political hits”. The source said: We need to be better, we need our politics to be better. Kemi obviously supports maternity pay and was making a case for lower regulation – something she always aimed for as business secretary. For other leadership campaigns to be seeking to use selective quotes from an interview to score political hits, shows they’re still wedded to the old politics and simply aren’t serious about getting back to government. Badenoch"s maternity pay comments show how "hopelessly out of touch" Tories are, TUC says Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, has issued a statement saying Kemi Badenoch’s comments about maternity pay (see 12.21pm) shows how “hopelessly out of touch” the Tories are. He said: The Conservative party leadership candidates are hopelessly out of touch and seem to be competing with one another to be the most unkind and nasty. Maternity pay in the UK is lower than in many other economies - forcing too many mums back from leave early. The Tories don’t appear to have any solutions for this country. All they have left is performative cruelty and division.