ToryFest 2023 – Emi S
Rishi’s been a bit busy this week hasn’t he? Welcome to a short guide of what happened at the Conservative Party Conference this year, which took place last weekend and garnered a little more commotion than usual. Here are the main points of the four-day conference:
Rishi’s Railways
Rishi Sunak focused much of his speech on this year’s conference’s slogan – ‘long-term decisions for a brighter future’ – admitting that ‘politics just doesn’t work the way it should’ and that the general public has grown exhausted of politicians not delivering on their promises… sounds familiar.
The long-awaited HS2 Northern lines were scrapped, Sunak now ‘changing direction’ to reinvest the remaining £36 billion into other transport links across the North and the Midlands, dubbed ‘Network North’. Maggie Simpson, director-general of the Rail Freight Group, said ‘the West Coast main line simple does not have the capacity for these extra trains alongside current services and rail freight growth’. He concluded the topic with, ‘I challenge anyone to tell me with a straight face that all of that isn’t what the North really needs.’ Reckon he might get a few letters in the coming week.
Gillian Keegan, Secretary of State for Education, was even moved to tears by Sunak’s journey from a family of third-generation immigrants to PM.
At the end of his speech, he introduced the ‘Advanced British Standard’, a qualification to replace A-levels that ensures both Maths and English are taught up to age 18, as well as an additional 195 hours spent in the classroom per year (you can see Daisy’s opinion of Sunak’s education proposals here).
Braverman’s Boats
Suella Braverman, Home Secretary, focused her speech on immigration (surprise, surprise) saying there would never be enough space in Britain for immigrants ‘even if we concreted over the countryside [or] turned our cities into one vast building site’. She basically just told immigrants that it’s good to dream – in fact, aspiration is ‘one of the cornerstones’ of the Tory party – but she draws the line at doing anything about it.
She also labelled Labour’s passing of the Human Rights Act the ‘Criminal Rights Act’, attacking them for being ‘woke’. Her description of ‘high controversial ideas’ such as ‘gender ideology, white privilege [and] anti-British history’ being presented to the British public ‘as if they are motherhood and apple pie’ (what?) caused a protestation from Conservative MP Andrew Boff, who replied ‘there’s no such thing!’ to Braverman’s declaration of the threat of ‘gender ideology’. He was immediately escorted out of the conference by security, where he gave a statement saying ‘I was brought up to believe that when you see a bully, you challenge them.’ Let’s just say the corresponding transphobic narrative coordinated between Sunak’s and Braverman’s speeches is definitely not an attempt to distract from anything. Definitely.
Motivational Mourdant
Penny Mourdant’s speech didn’t have much new-policy content, and was more focused on rallying the conference into solidarity ‘against the odds’ – one phrase that stuck out was ‘[Labour’s] sanctimonious claptrap’. Maggie Thatch (inevitably) got a few honourable mentions as a shining light in the history of the Tory Party, despite Mourdant’s increasing accusations of Labour wanting to take Britain back to the dark ages of the 1980s. Much repetition of willing the people to ‘stand up and fight’, and basically just a lot of yapping about bullying (I got tired of listening at the 2 hour mark).
Bonus: gift shop
The Mirror have been busy on TikTok, showing us the goods in the Tory Party Conference’s gift shop. Items included Kier Starmer flip flops (not sure what the joke is here), a blank notebook titled ‘Labour’s Plan for the Country’, and a multitude of Thatcher memorabilia – water bottles, aprons, mugs (ironic), and even Christmas jumpers.
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