Kemi Badenoch has declared herself a “classic old school Conservative” as she begins her party’s annual conference with a string of policy pledges and a 100 page statement on her guiding principles., external

“I believe in common sense, people working hard and being rewarded for that effort,” she told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

She added that welfare should be a “safety net, not a lifestyle”.

The Tory leader is trying to ensure her party stands out in a crowded political field. The Conservatives are trailing Labour and Reform UK in the opinion polls and have yet to recover from their historic defeat at the 2024 general election.

Badenoch, whose personal poll ratings are higher than that of her party, has characterised Reform leader Nigel Farage as a “grumpy grandpa” and she told Laura Kuenssberg that Labour leader Andy Burnham is “the cheesy uncle who does all the dad jokes”.

She described herself as a “no-nonsense mum”.

Asked if her plan for benefit cuts and a massive increase in prison places was a return to the “nasty party” of the past, she said: “It’s the common sense party. That’s what we’re doing.

“And, quite frankly, if we were doing so well the old way, then why did we have such a terrible issue in 2024?”

In her essay The Right Way – a deliberate echo of an essay written by Margaret Thatcher in 1976, external entitled The Right Approach – Badenoch says the last Conservative government failed because it did not know what it stood for.

Despite the party’s rhetoric during its 14 years in power, she said: “We did little to reverse the structural changes Labour had made which took the country in the wrong direction.

“The result was that the state grew by stealth.”

The essay says the “next Conservative government will have one central principle: business, not government, creates growth”.

The Tories would achieve growth through tax cuts, cutting red tape and reducing the size of the civil service back to pre-pandemic levels, the essay says.

And it adds: “What is really missing from politics and government today is people prepared to say no.

“Political parties now need to recruit those who have the stomach to say no to good causes when the resources simply are not there to do everything.”

As their conference gets under way in Birmingham the Conservatives have pledged to end a childcare “cliff edge”, which currently means parents earning more than £100,000 do not qualify for the entitlement.

The party has also promised to deliver 50,000 new prison places by slashing the overseas aid budget to £1bn a year in a bid to end the early release of offenders.

Over the 14 years the Conservatives were in power, around 500 net prison places were created, which takes into account 14,142 added in existing and new jails, set against 13,660 lost mainly to dilapidation and closures.

Labour Party chair Bridget Phillipson said the Tory Party “is stuck in the past and remains completely out of touch with what people across Britain want to see”.

“Last week Andy Burnham set out a plan to bring back hope to Britain. Kemi Badenoch wants to drag our country back to a politics that let so many people down over the past 40 years.”

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