Kemi Badenoch opened the Conservative party’s annual conference in Manchester, telling delegates the party was ‘up for the fight’ and acknowledging there is a ‘mountain to climb’ in the polls behind Reform UK and Labour.

She set out a policy package to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and to deport about 150,000 people each year. She argued the approach should pair tighter borders with a shared culture, saying nations must have a strong common culture rooted in history, language, institutions and the rule of law, and that borders and numbers matter.

The party published proposals to deport up to 750,000 people over five years, create a Removals Force modelled on US ICE, tighten asylum rules and abolish immigration courts. On the conference floor, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said any foreign national found to express racial hatred or to support extremism or terrorism would be deported. Dame Priti Patel told a fringe event that the Removals Force would be very different from ICE. Badenoch also framed economic responsibility as central to Conservative policy and said lessons had been drawn from Liz Truss’s mini-budget, adding that identity politics is a trap.