James Heale

In elections, as in wine, lesser years can still produce good vintages. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown first won their seats in 1983, the year of Labour’s ‘longest suicide note in history’; William Hague’s landslide defeat in 2001 gave us David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson. The 2017 election is not recalled fondly by many Conservatives. Yet it produced the cluster of ambitious Tories running the party today. Ahead of the party conference in October there will be a steady drumbeat of announcements Kemi Badenoch was marked for the top as soon as she entered parliament. ‘It was clear from the start she wasn’t there to make up the numbers,’ says a fellow member of the 2017 intake. She quickly made allies: Lee Rowley, Alex Burghart, Julia Lopez and Rachel Maclean.

The people’s republic of Holborn and St Pancras is not exactly fertile Tory territory. But it was in a swanky office in Keir Starmer’s north London patch where Kemi Badenoch chose to make her big energy speech this morning. Rather than dwell on her long-awaited policy commissions, the Conservative leader spent the bulk of her speech explaining her decision to drop the party’s commitment to net zero by 2050. In something akin to a Tory TedTalk, she bestrode the stage, clicking through various slides, replete with charts explaining how the UK came to have ‘the highest electricity bills in the developed world.’ Virtually every element of current UK policy making in this field came under attack. Wind farms? Dependant on Chinese production from coal-fired power stations.

It is a hundred years in October since Margaret Thatcher's birth – so what Conservative leader would miss the chance to lay claim to the Iron Lady's legacy? Kemi Badenoch was up this afternoon as the keynote speaker at the Centre for Policy Studies' conference at the Guildhall in London. The theme of this year's annual Tory shindig has been 'remaking conservatism' – and Badenoch clearly sees an opening to remake conservatism in her image. Her remarks this afternoon were brief but kept to the pattern of her leadership bid last summer. Badenoch dubbed Mrs Thatcher 'the leader who saved our country: she didn't arrive in office to manage decline; she came to reverse it.

Dale Vince has donated millions of pounds to Labour, but the green energy tycoon is only just getting started in politics. Having helped remove the Tories from power last summer, Vince is turning his attention from party donations to offering ministers a ready-made policy platform instead. The 63-year-old wants to champion an eco-agenda for Keir Starmer’s government via his Green Britain Foundation. The six-man outfit works to apply ‘green principles to transport, food, sport, telecoms, jewellery’ – and now the world of Whitehall too. When we speak over Zoom, Vince is critical of Labour’s decision to press on with both carbon capture and the Sizewell C reactor.

Following Thursday's big speech on public sector reform, Sir Keir Starmer has since turned his attention back to foreign affairs. This morning the Prime Minister hosted a conference call with European and Commonwealth counterparts to discuss support for Ukraine. The 'coalition of the willing' met to discuss their response to Vladimir Putin's contemptuous dismissal of their efforts on Thursday night. With the Russian President seemingly reluctant to entertain an imminent ceasefire, today's 'virtual summit' was about maintaining a united front for the pre-negotiations. In his remarks, Starmer told coalition leaders that 'what this week has shown' is that Ukraine is 'the party of peace' as President Zelenskyy is the one who 'has committed to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.

He has done it again. Donald Trump has announced that, from tomorrow, tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium imports will be doubled to 50 per cent. In a statement on Truth Social, the President reiterated his call for Canada – which he labelled ‘one of the highest tariffing nations anywhere in the world’ – to become ‘the Fifty First State’. He explained that he was imposing the latest tariffs in response to a decision by Ontario premier Doug Ford to slap a 25 per cent tax on electricity exports to northern US states. Doug Ford’s policy was itself issued in retaliation to the sweeping 25 per cent tariffs that Trump had initially placed on imports from Canada. It is fair to say that this trade equivalent of tit-for-tat is not impressing the markets.

After months of leading in the polls, Reform UK is now in meltdown. This afternoon, the party chairman, Zia Yusuf, and the chief whip, Lee Anderson, released a joint statement which says that they have now referred Rupert Lowe to the police. The pair say that they have ‘received complaints from two female employees about serious bullying’ in Lowe’s offices and that ‘we understand complaints have been made to parliamentary authorities’. They allege that evidence has been provided of workplace bullying, with female staff who raised concerns being targeted. They suggest too that Lowe made ‘derogatory and discriminatory remarks’ about women, ‘including reference to a perceived disability’.