Senior Conservatives have been reluctant to criticise Liz Truss directly over her mini-budget at this conference, even though it had a terrible impact on the party’s poll rating. But Robert Jenrick has gone further than most others in an interview with ITV’s Peston being broadcast tonight. Asked about the mini-budget, he said:

I think that the mini budget in particular did great harm to our reputation for sound management of the public finances - it was cack-handed, it was careless and it was unconservative and that is part of my mission now, to rebuild our reputation for sound management of the public finances and reclaim the mantle for low tax and pro growth.

Kemi Badenoch has denied suggestions that her maternity pay gaffe was damaging to her campaign.

When Emily Maitlis from the News Agents podcast asked her if the “maternity row” had damaged her, Badenoch hit back, saying:

I don’t know what maternity row you are talking about.

I’ve given a statement and said that maternity pay is important.

If people want to have a confected row, they’re well within their rights to do that.

But I am having a serious conversation in this party about the existential crisis that faces us.

James Cleverly has said that Rishi Sunak’s decision to say that he would “stop the boats” was a mistake.

Speaking at a fringe meeting, he said:

I think the phrase stop the boats was an error.

It distilled a very, very complicated and challenging problem into a soundbite.

The implication – not the implication, I suppose the self-imposed yardstick – was even one boat was a failure, and that was an unachievable target.

During the Q&A in the conference hall this afternoon, Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch both talked about the need for a cap on immigration. But, while Tugendhat called for a very firm limit, Badenoch implied she wanted more flexibility.

Tugendhat said he believed in a firm net migration limit of 100,000 people coming in to the UK each year. In the past Tory ministers backed a cap in theory, but demanded exemptions. He said:

Secretaries of state need to own their record. I got deeply frustrated with this pledge that you and I constantly heard and I made because I meant it, of up to 100,000.

“(You) then hear secretaries of state saying ‘Yeah, no I get that, but my department is an exception. My department is different. My department’s not the same as others. Oh no, I get the cap, but not for me.’

Well I’m afraid that’s not how government works. You’ve got to actually mean it. And I’m afraid when secretaries of state say ‘trade will suffer, health will suffer, foreign relations will suffer, we won’t get the builders in to housing’, well that’s not the answer.

You’ve got to train people, you’ve got to inspire apprenticeships, you’ve got to put a cap on degrees, you have got to make sure that what you’re actually doing is helping people to fill those spaces.”

Badenoch said she thought a cap was necessary, but that it would have to be cleverly designed. She explained:

I think there will need to be a cap, but we also need to design a system that means the cap cannot be manipulated.

So you won’t hear me say, I promise to have a cap and it’s going to be this number. It’s very easy to create a cap, we saw this with the point migration system.

If you have a cap and you have lots of the wrong people coming in, or worse good people leaving our country – good people leaving our country is great for net migration stats – migration stats shouldn’t just be about the numbers, it should be about who is coming in, who is leaving, why that is happening, otherwise we are talking to the letter not the spirit of lowering immigration.

Robert Jenrick has renewed his call for the Tory leadership contest to be shortened. At a fringe meeting this afternoon he said:

[I told CCHQ] 100%, whether it’s me or somebody else, the next leader of this party needs to be stood at the dispatch box making the argument to Rachel Reeves, holding her to account.

I do not know for the life of me why this decision has been made.

It’s very kind of Rishi [Sunak] to agree to do this, but I think it should be the next leader of our party who’s making that argument.

In her Q&A in the conference hall Kemi Badenoch said she described herself as working class when she arrived in London as a teenager because, although she had had a middle class life in Nigeria, in London she was poor. (See 3.23pm.) The description of this period of her life in Blue Ambition, Lord Ashcroft’s biography of her, broadly backs up this account, although it also claims she did not have to work at this point. It says:

“Most of the time I was out of the house because I was working,” remembers Dr [Abiola Tilley Gyado, a friend of Badenoch’s parents’, who had a house on the outskirts of Wimbledon where Badenoch was staying]. “I had some responsibility for health programmes in my organisation so I travelled a lot.” This left Badenoch with time on her hands, sometimes rattling around the house alone, so she took a part-time job preparing food at McDonald’s in Wimbledon town centre. Never having eaten a hamburger before, Badenoch couldn’t believe her luck in being able to enjoy them free of charge as a perk. “She worked there at weekends and in the holidays,” Dr Gyado says. “It wasn’t what she had to do. I didn’t ask her for money for rent or food. It was her choice to work hard.” With this small income, Badenoch sometimes went out to the theatre. Otherwise she would be at home studying, writing letters to her family, reading or watching television. The idea of frequenting London’s pubs and clubs did not occur to her and she had few friends with whom to socialise.

In a message to colleagues announcing his decision to stand down at the end of the year, Simon Case said he hoped civil servants would in future remain “servants of others”, leaving party politics to politicians. He said:

Those who choose public service deserve thanks for the choice they have made, whether that service be in politics, the civil service, the armed forces, the emergency services, our National Health Service, local government and beyond. I have seen truly motivated people doing remarkable things in the pursuit of their nations’ and communities’ interests through a pandemic, wars, a change of reign, economic emergencies and unprecedented demand for modern public services. I have seen so very many colleagues committed to their purpose, displaying tenacity and ingenuity, whilst sacrificing their own personal interests for others.

As the civil service continues its journey forwards, I hope those who make up our number now and in the future can continue the pursuit of that necessary balance of continuity and change. The world is changing fast and so must the civil service. The global context, the relentless evolution of technology, increasing public expectations of the services they consume and many more factors require us to keep adapting.

At the same time, the core values of our United Kingdom have not changed and so I hope that the civil service will hold onto its fundamental purpose and values in the never-ending task of serving the government of the day and, through them, the people of our country. We must remain servants of others. We should resist the temptation to become the arbiters of, or participants in, legitimate democratic debate, leaving party politics to politicians and demonstrating our enduring and profound belief in democracy through the service of the elected government of the day.

This is what Simon Case has said about his resignation.

This morning, I informed the prime minister of my intention to step down as cabinet secretary and head of the civil service at the end of the year.

As many of you know, I have been undergoing medical treatment for a neurological condition over the last 18 months and, whilst the spirit remains willing, the body is not. It is a shame that I feel I have to spell this out, but my decision is solely to do with my health and nothing to do with anything else.

He said the prime minister would appoint his successor following a “full, open and transparent process which will be run by the First Civil Service Commissioner,” adding:

It has been an honour to serve two sovereigns, four prime ministers and over 120 cabinet ministers in this role.

There have been far more ups than downs along the way and by far the greatest highlight has been the privilege of working with so many remarkable public servants, across the length and breadth of our country, in our overseas posts and with counterparts from our close allies and partners around the world.

Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, has announced he will stand down at the end of the year on health grounds, saying “whilst the spirit remains willing, the body is not”.

This announcement is has been expected for a while, and it will be welcomed by Labour figures who believe that he has not been an effective cabinet secretary, particularly because his relations with Sue Gray, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, are strained.

The announcement means Starmer can now activate the process of choosing a successor.

Q: Should we bring forward the date the contest ends?

Badenoch says the party have set the date and should stick with it. If they keep changing their mind, they will look “not serious”. She says she does not accept the argument that the new leader needs to reply to the budget.

We have a prime minister who’s never been in the Treasury. We have a leader of the opposition who used to be chancellor. We have a shadow chancellor who knows that building [the Treasury] inside out. We can do this. It’s not about who’s becoming leader a few days later. It is about us using all of the talents within our party.

Asked how it would feel to be the first black Tory leader, Badenoch said:

I don’t know, I’ve never done it before. I’m sure it’ll be interesting but I am somebody who wants the colour of skin to be no more significant than the colour of our hair or the colour of our eyes.

Badenoch says she does not favour having an elected party chair. But she thinks CCHQ needs reform.

UPDATE: Badenoch said:

I am always prepared to work with any other party that wants to help us deliver our agenda. I think that’s fine in parliament, but in an election, no.

At the next election we have to be the centre right option. If we split that vote, we are going to be out of power for another five years and Labour will destroy this country.

Hope asks Badenoch about her comments about maternity pay yesterday, and suggests voters will think the Tories want to cut it. Badenoch implies she was deliberately misrepresented.

She says Margaret Thatcher is well known for saying ‘There is no such thing as society”, even though the full quote shows that she was stressing the importance of people acting collectively. [Thatcher said: “Who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.”]

Badenoch says that is a good example of how a reply “got cut down into a sound bite that was used to attack her”. She suggests the same thing happened to her.

When you are a leader, when you are a Conservative, when you are making the argument for Conservative principles, your opponents are going to try and turn it into something else. We need to decide who’s going to be leader of the party, not the left, not the Guardian, not the BBC, just Conservatives.

In fact, Badenoch was not misrepresented yesterday. She did say that maternity pay was excessive, although she later clarified that this was not her considered view.

Q: Will you redefine what it is to be Tory?

Badenoch says her mission is about restating Conservatism, not redefining it. She says they all believe in personal responsibility.

Q: What did you mean when you told me on my podcast they working in McDonalds made you working class?

Badenoch replies:

It wasn’t working at McDonald’s that made me working class. It was an example of how I had become working class.

I wasn’t working there as a weekend job or part time. That was my job. I was going to college, part-time, going to an FE college, and I had left Nigeria, where I’d had a middle class life, driven to school every day, and the first time I ever went on a bus was in this country. But I couldn’t even afford bus money most of the time. I had to walk everywhere.

Sometimes I was hungry. I was on my own. I had a place to live, but I had to do everything myself at a very young age. If that is not working class, I didn’t know what working classes is.

The working classes are the people who have to work for a living, otherwise they will be in trouble. They are people who don’t necessarily have big savings or a family that can look after them.

The Tugendhat Q&A is over, and Christopher Hope is now interviewing Kemi Badenoch.

Q: When did you decide that you could be leader?

Badenoch says she stood in 2022 and did better than expected. After that contest, she thought she could win in a future contest.

Q: Are your family in favour of this?

Badenoch says her husband is fully supportive. Her mother does not understand why she is doing this. She says others are in between.

Voters do not understand how much the last government did on the environment and decarbonising the energy system, the Tory MP and former energy minister Graham Stuart told a fringe meeting.

He said:

Three or four people out of 10 over the last few years saw the UK as doing more than other countries to tackle climate change, and polling showed that 50% of the population consistently said we weren’t spending enough on reducing emissions. Given our records, the fact that we didn’t promote that among the people who care about this was problematic.

He praised Labour for lifting the onshore wind ban but said the Conservatives would be opposing onshore energy infrastructure.

He said:

We now have a government which has made in my view some correct early moves, like getting rid of the effective moratorium on onshore wind - that was always mad to do that – and we’ve got onshore wind back.

But it seems to want to take an approach to developing the infrastructure which is sticking its fingers in its ears and screaming and not listening and railroading everyone.

If you do that, from pylons to solar to other energy, you’re going to get a massive backlash, and we, inevitably in opposition, are going to be championing that and using that for a great deal of local electoral advantages.

The shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho accused Ed Miliband, her opposite number, of “lying” to the electorate about their energy bills.

Speaking at a fringe meeting, she said:

One of the difficulties Labour are having is they spent an election campaign promising they’d save people £300 off their energy bills and now they are in power they cannot repeat that claim as it is not based on anything.

Emma Pinchbeck, the CEO of Energy UK, was also on the panel and agreed it was unwise to make claims about energy bills, particularly as the renewables which drive down bills are still being built and connected to the grid.

Pinchbeck acknowledged it will be a “crunchy decade for energy bills”.

Coutinho added that it was foolish of Miliband and Labour to focus so much on wind and solar for their plans to decarbonise the grid and said we should wait and try and develop technologies such as nuclear fusion “to sell around the world”.

She also claimed the British public do not put environmental concerns above other worries, adding:

We need to be very careful when we talk about that the public care about because predominantly they care about cheap energy. Renewables are not cheap in all circumstances. My view is that you have to prioritise cheap energy in your country.

Q: Do you favour an electoral deal with Reform UK? [See 2.04pm.]

Tugendhat says he wants to reform the Conservative party, not turn it into Reform UK.

Q: You have less ministerial experience than the other candidates. You were security minister for two years. Is that a worry?

Channel Ronald Reagan’s famous answer to a question about his age, Tugendhat (a former soldier, and a former chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee) says:

I’m not going to hold against anybody their inexperience in combat or their inexperience in foreign affairs …

I won’t hold against them, the areas where they didn’t serve our country and didn’t put their lives on the line. They have served in other ways, and I think we should respect that.

Tugendhat says he proud of his record as a minister.

I’ll stand on [my record]. Mine is two years keeping this country safe, introducing the National Security Act, arresting and charging more Russian and Chinese agents in the previous decade, and reforming areas of our intelligence and security services and I’m never going to tell you about [ie, highly secret stuff].

Tugendhat says he has a message for members about the general election.

It wasn’t this party that failed, it wasn’t the ideas that failed. It was the centre that failed, and we need to own that.

And so from my perspective, let me just say to all of you, I’m sorry, the infighting in Westminster, the chaos in Westminster, and then the campaign, they will let you down.

Talking of GB News, Christopher Hope, the GB News political editor, has just arrived on stage at the conference. Hope has been asked by the Tories to host the Q&A sessions with all four leadership questions.

He says he will be asking “tough questions” but not “gotcha questions”. (Kemi Badenoch will approve.)

He says he will be asking questions for half an hour, and then taking questions from the audience for half an hour.

The first hour is devoted to Tom Tugendhat. Then Kemi Badenoch is up.

The other two candidates are getting the Chopper treatment (Chopper is Hope’s nickname, which he uses in the title for his podcast).

Tugendhat is on the platform too and, after a bit of small talk, Hope asks what Tugendhat learned from his time in the army.

Tugendhat says he has devoted his life to service, and protecting his country.

Q: Were you a spy?

Tugendhat says he was a uniformed intelligence officer.

Q: On the internet there are claims you were a spy?

Tugendhat says there are a lot of things on the internet.

The Conservative party should form an electoral part with Reform UK, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, has said.

According to a report by Amy Gibbons for the Telegraph, Rees-Mogg, who lost his seat at the election, said that there are almost 100 seats won by Labour where Reform UK came second at the election. Rees-Mogg said:

What should we do? Well, let’s for once model ourselves on David Cameron and make a big generous offer ...

What if we were to say at the next election, as we did to the liberal unionists, we will not oppose Reform in those 98 seats? I would certainly be open to that as a real opportunity to Reform to win seats from Labour.”

I think it would help us, it will help them. And we will not win if we do not reunite.

All four Tory leadership have said they are focused on winning back voters from Reform UK, rather than doing a deal with Nigel Farage’s party, and so there seems little chance of Rees-Mogg’s idea being adopted in the near future. But a survey of Tory members in July found that more than a third of them were in favour of an electoral pact with Reform UK.

Rees-Mogg is one of the Tories most aligned with Reform UK. He and Farage are both leading presenters on GB News.

This is what Liz Truss said at the Telegraph fringe to explain why she said she thought the Tories would have done better at the election if she had stayed on as leader and PM. (See 12.51pm.)

When asked to explain why she thought she would have done better than Sunak, Truss replied:

Because when I was when I was in No 10, Reform was polling at 3%. By the time we got to the election, I think they got 18% because we promised change that we didn’t deliver.

[Reform UK hit 18% in at least one poll during the campaign, but in the election itself they got 14%.]

Of course, without the support of the parliamentary party, it was very, very difficult for me to get my changes through. And if you have people in the parliamentary party saying ‘It’s Liz Truss’s fault this has happened, not the Bank of London’s fault’, which is what people did and are still doing, it is very difficult for me to deliver that change.

But if the mini-budget had been allowed to succeed, we’d have lower corporation tax, bringing more companies into this country, not relocating to Ireland. We’d have duty free shoppers coming to London, rather than being diverted to Paris or Milan.

We’d have got on with fracking. One of the biggest reasons this country is stagnant is our high energy prices, which are now four times what they are in the United States. By now, fracking would be taking place in Britain, and I think they would have a serious impact with all those competitiveness.

Q: What books would you recommend to turn a young person rightwing?

Truss recommends With No Apologies, Barry Goldwater’s memoir.

Q: Will you try to return to parliament?

Truss says she is still thinking about that.

But she says she is not going to give up on the ideological fight.

Stanley asks the audience if they want her back. They applaud to indicate they do – but not with massive enthusiasm.

Stanley says Truss is being very gloomy. Is there anything she can say to cheer them up.

Truss replies: “Trump might win.”

This gets the first proper round of applause from the audience.

Truss says the left have been winning the arguments globally. She goes on:

Trump winning in America will be a sign that the tide is turning because at present we have Keir Starmer in London, we’ve got socialists in Australia, Canada, America, France, Germany. We need to start turning the tide the other way. And this will be the first domino …

Trump is anti establishment. Yes, the Davos World Economic Forum elite do not like Donald Trump, and I take that as a good sign.

Stanley points out that the US courts don’t like Trump much either. He says he sympathises with her views, but other people will think supporting Trump like this is weird.

Truss says his record in office was a good one.

His foreign policy was much better. He held Iran to account. He took action on Ukraine and Russia in a way that Obama hadn’t. Yes, he was much tougher on China, but domestically, he did all the things that unleashed the American economy, supply side reforms, regulatory reforms, tax cuts, fracking, building oil pipelines. He made the American economy successful, and that is what Biden has been riding off despite some of his poorer economic policies.

Q: Do you think you could have won the election?

Truss says she thinks it would have been very difficult for the Tories to win the election.

I think our best chance of winning would have been to have kept Boris. I think it was a very stupid move by some of my colleagues that undermine Boris, and they still haven’t admitted that.

Q: If you had stayed on and fought the election, do you think you would have done better than Rishi Sunak?

Truss replies: “Yes, I do.”

But, she says, without the support of Tory MPs, it was hard for her to get her changes thought.

And even people in the party were blaming her mini-budget for the problems with the economy.

UPDATE: See 1.41pm for the quote from Truss explaining why she thinks she would have done better than Sunak.

Truss says the key divide in British politics is between people who want change, and people who don’t.

And the Conservative party is divided on this too.

Labour represent the establishment, she says. She says Rachel Reeves used to work for the Bank of England, and Keir Starmer is a former official, as DPP.

She says she lost her seat because Reform UK did very well in her seat. But she does not think people in her seat want a Labour MP. They want change. There were two parties offering change, and Labour came through the middle, she says.

Reform came third in her seat, with 9,958 votes. Truss got 11,217, and the Labour candidate who won got 11,847.

Q: Labour says they need to impose cuts or put up taxes because of your legacy?

Truss says that argument is “economic illiteracy”.

She says taxes were at a 70-year high when she became PM. She tried to change that round, but her mini-budget was not implemented because of opposition from establishment organisations.

She says a Bank of England report earlier this year said two thirds of the spike in the gilt market after the mini-budget was due to the Bank failing to regulate the pensions investment market.

But people do not acknowledge that, he says.

Tim Stanley says he shares Truss’s analysis. But he says many Tories don’t. How do you respond to that.

Truss puts her arms in the air, smiles and says she does not know what to say about the 2017 election (which May messed up). She says she does not want to get into a slanging match with May.

James Cleverly has said The Tories need to stop “behaving like bloody children” in order to win back voters.

At a fringe meeting, he was asked what one policy he would prioritise in order to win back voters.

He replied that earning trust was more important, telling the audience:

The first thing we need to do is win back the trust and support of the voters. We behaved appallingly.

Asked how the party could do this, he replied: “Um, stop behaving like bloody children.”

Liz Truss is about to speak at the Tory conference. Two years ago she was here as PM and party leader. Now she is not even an MP, having lost her South West Norfok seat, where she had a 26,000 majority, in one of Labour’s most dramatic wins on election night.

This is her only scheduled appearance at the Birmingham conference. She is not speaking in the main hall, but she is a fringe organised by the Daily Telegraph where she is being interviewed by Tim Stanley, the Telegraph’s parliamentary sketchwriter.

There was a long queue to get in and the venue, one of the biggest halls in the centre, seating maybe around 400 people, is full.

A prominent businessman has named himself as the source of a £75,000 donation to Robert Jenrick amid transparency concerns over the ultimate origin of the funds, PA Media reports. PA says:

Entrepreneur Phillip Ullmann said he gave the money to the Conservative party leadership frontrunner through Spott Fitness, a fitness coaching app provider which he said is “part of my family’s group of businesses”.

However, Ullmann’s name does not currently appear on the list of people with significant control in Spott Fitness at Companies House, leaving a question mark over his formal links to the organisation.

Labour has demanded an investigation into the origin of the money after Mr Jenrick received three donations of £25,000 from the business in July. [See 8.33am.]

In a statement on Monday, Ullmann said he wanted to avoid suggestions that he is “hiding anything” and insisted he understands the importance of transparency surrounding political donations.

“I’ve been a successful businessman over the years. But in recent times I’ve become concerned about the grave challenges facing the UK and the rest of the world,” he said.

“I tried, unsuccessfully, to make some of that right by changing my businesses into social enterprises. But I’ve come to see that we need huge political change.”

He said he has been “giving to figures of a broadly communitarian bent for several years”, including Labour peer Maurice Glasman, Tory MPs John Hayes and Danny Kruger, the New Conservatives, and the New Social Covenant Unit.

Ullmann added: “I also wanted to back Robert Jenrick whose serious solutions to big challenges – including on migration – appeal to me. I don’t agree with him on everything but broadly we are aligned.

“I chose to give the money from Spott Fitness, a company which is part of my family’s group of businesses. It’s a phenomenal company that’s using tech to improve people’s health and will be a hugely successful business.

“But I don’t want there to be any suggestion at all that I’m hiding anything and I understand the importance of donor transparency. So I’m happy to confirm my connection to Spott. I love my country, I was born and raised in the UK, and have always paid tax and lived here.

“I’m going to continue to set out my ideas for changing the world and our financial system and am always happy to meet with people and set out my ideas in this space.”

Q: Why do you think you can reform the European convention on human rights when previous attempts have failed?

Badenoch says she does not think you can reform it.

That is not where she would start with in terms of having an immigration policy.

She thinks leaving the ECHR would lead to wrangling with bodies like the House of Lords, as you had with Brexit.

There are countries in the ECHR that are deporting 70% of people. In the UK, it is 10%. That shows the ECHR is not the problem, she says.

She says one problem is the staff in the Home Office. They do not support tough policies. Some of them would be better off working for Amnesty.

But if it proves necessary to leave the ECHR, she would back leaving.

Q: What have you learned during the campaign talking to members?

Badenoch says she has learned that members are “very angry”, she says.

I’ve learned that the members are very angry. Members are angry with national politicians because they got tired of seeing us squabbling, inviting disagreements, and they don’t want to see that anymore.

Kemi Badenoch starts with a short speech about her campaign.

She says it is called Renewal 2030, not Kemi for leader, because she thinks this is an existential moment for the party.

She thougth they 2020s were going to be a great decade for the party. They had a brilliant leader. But things did not work out, she says.

She says voters will not vote for the party they kicked out. To win, the party has to change.

That is why her campaign is about renewing everything.

The party will need a leader who can “cut through at a time when it is very difficult to be heard”, she says.

Q: Are you worried about decisions being outsourced to officials, quangos and third-party experts. Being a councillor feels like accountability without responsibility. How would you change that?

Jenrick says this will get worse. Labour is creating more quangos and bodies like this – “Great British Energy, Great British Railways, the National Wealth Fund, you name it.” And these bodies will be staffed by people of a leftwing or liberal mindset.

He says quangos were set up with good intentions.

But now they need to be cut back, he says.

And he says the Tories should have cut back things like the Climate Change Act, the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act.

He says there is a case for something like a Great Reform Act that would review this network of law. He says many of theses laws have “noble aims”, but they constrain what ministers can do. He goes on:

And so I think we should think about. Should some of these go? Should they be amended? Can they be improved? And that that would be a major reform that we could bring in as soon as possible.

Jenrick says the Tories should take inspiration from the recovery of the Conservative party in Canada. He says:

And I want to do that. And I take a lot of inspiration from our sister party in Canada, and just before the election was called, I went to meet them, and there you see a party which does not resile from traditional conservative values. They campaign on virtually the same issues that I do, immigration, lower taxes, building homes for young people, crime – we would probably add in the NHS – but similar issues.

But through great social media, really good communication, they’re able to explain them to a broad audience of people, including younger people, and they are now beating super woke Justin Trudeau with the 20-somethings, the 30-somethings, the 40-somethings, and appear to be on the cusp of winning an election.

Robert Jenrick is speaking at a Conservative Women’s Organisation fringe at the conference. He starts by saying the CWO is the world’s oldest female political organisation linked to a party.

He says he is reluctant to talk about men’s issues and women’s issues. But there are things the party does need to do to ensure it appeals to women, he says.

He says the party could hope for Labout to fail. But he wants the Conservative party to change.

In office, it achieved much, he says. But it must acknowledge its failures. It did not control the borders and lower taxes.

If the Tories accept their failings, and listen to the public, they can rebuild people’s trust.

He stands for change, he says.

Robert Jenrick has used a campaign rally just outside the Conservative conference to paint the issue of migration in highly stark terms, saying his party will “die” if it does not commit to quitting the European convention on human rights. (See 8.23am.)

Speaking to supporters in a studio theatre at Birmingham Rep, Jenrick repeated his styling of the issue in Brexit terms, saying the choice was between the “leave” of leaving the ECHR or “remain” of staying in it, and that this was a chance to “get migration done”.

He again criticised opponents like Kemi Badenoch who have said they would first seek to change the way the convention works. He said:

This is more than just, ‘leave or amend’ – frankly, our party doesn’t have a future unless we take a stand and fix this problem. It’s leave or die for our party – I’m for leave.

Asked by reporters afterwards if this was not a bit hyperbolic, Jenrick rejected this. He said. “If we don’t take a stand on fixing illegal migration, restoring sovereignty to our people and our parliament, there isn’t a future for the Conservative party,” he insisted.

At the rally, which at times resembled a general election event with the crowd of placard-holding supporters standing behind Jenrick in the half-full hall, he took several swipes at party officials for not allowing him and the other leadership candidates more of a chance to speak inside the conference.

He also repeatedly placed the issue of leaving the ECHR as connected to crime and terrorism, saying that the country was not able to be safe if it could not deport overseas nationals convicted of serious offences who blocked their removal via the convention.

Asked if he was more explicitly linking migration and crime or terrorism, as done by Donald Trump, Jenrick rejected this.

Foreign national offenders in our country,who we have struggled to deport because of our membership of the European Convention on Human Rights – that’s the issue I was raising.

Jeremy Hunt ended his Q&A with Daniel Finkelstein by saying the Tories had to win back younger voters. He said:

What is the biggest challenge we face as a party?

Our biggest strategic challenge is the fact that the average age above which you are more likely to vote Conservative than Labour is now over 60.

If we are the party of aspiration, we have to have a message for 30-somethings, 40-somethings, starting out on their life, who are prepared to work hard, who are conservatives to their fingertips, in their values, in the way they lead their lives, in their belief in all the things that all of us believe in.

We have to have a message that appeals to them.

So I would say, as we rebuild our trust with the British people, a litmus test of whether we are on track is whether we are starting to do things that rebuild confidence, trust and excitement amongst those generations, because they’re not just the future of the country, they’re the future of our party as well.

This chart, from a More in Common election analysis, illustrates the point Hunt was making about the crossover point, the age at which people are more likely to vote Tory than Labour. More in Common says it was 62 at the last election. In 2019 it was 39.

Q: Do you accept claims from groups like the Resolution Foundation that any party would find it hard to cut tax now?

Hunt says cutting taxes would be a challenge. But he says countries with lower tax have higher growth.

He says he is worried that welfare reform will now be “untouchable” for the Labour partly because of the backlash to the decision to cut the winter fuel payments.

My worry about the last 12 weeks is Labour have got themselves so badly burnt with the mess they’ve got into over winter fuel allowance that welfare reform will now become untouchable for them.

If they worried about a battle with the Labour party on benefits paid to pensioners, including wealthier pensioners, you can imagine what a challenge it would be to cut the bill for working-age disabled people, which is due to increase by £25bn a year over the next five years. It’s a huge, huge increase.

He says the bill for benefits for working age disabled people is due to increase by £25bn over the next five years. That is an area where there is a crucial need for reform, he says. But he claims Labour will not address this.

Jeremy Hunt, the shadow chancellor, is speaking at the conference hall now. He is being interviewed by Daniel Finkelstein, the Times columnist and Tory peer.

Hunt says Rachel Reeves’ claim that the Tories left the worst economic inheritance since the war is one of “the biggest lies” told by Labour.

He says he would have died to have had the legacy Reeves had when he took over.

He says a Freedom of Information Act inquiry by the Financial Times recently showed the Treasury was unwilling to justify its claim that there is a £22bn black hole in the public finances.

UPDATE: Asked if he agreed with Labour’s claim that the state of the economy will get worse before it gets better, Hunt said:

They will get worse if Labour makes catastrophic mistakes in the budget and hikes up tax in a way that destroys growth.

I think one of the biggest lies we’ve had since Labour came to office is this nonsense about having the worst economic inheritance since the second world war …

You don’t have to take my word for it, I mean just read this week’s Economist where there’s an article saying that [Reeves] could have actually not have a black hole of £22bn but a surplus of £39bn.

Hunt was referring to this Economist article. Here is an extract.

The reality is more nuanced. The Tories did plenty to mute growth and muddle the public finances. But Ms Reeves has more wriggle room than she has let on. The constraints she faces on tax are largely self-imposed. Even the £22bn black hole is something of a mirage. Perhaps around half was truly unforeseeable: troubling cost overruns on the asylum system and more. But, as one-offs, these don’t affect Britain’s fiscal position much. The other half—pay bumps for public-sector workers—will have a fiscal impact but were no surprise …

Jeremy Hunt, Ms Reeves’s predecessor, left Britain with £8.9bn in “fiscal headroom”, the amount of borrowing permitted before the government violates its fiscal rules. Since then gilt yields have fallen, growth has been strong-ish and another fiscal year has passed, which rolls the five-year target on by another year. That should push Britain’s fiscal headroom up once the OBR updates its forecasts. Capital Economics, a consultancy, reckons it will hit £22bn.

With tweaks, that headroom could rise further still. One sensible move would be to exclude the Bank of England’s losses from quantitative easing from the definition of public debt used for the fiscal rules. Doing so would push headroom up by another £17bn, to £39bn.

Talking of Nigel Farage, yesterday the Reform UK leader posted a thread on social media attacking the two favourites to be next Tory leader. He said Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch cannot be trusted on immigration.

Conservative Party Conference begins in earnest tomorrow.

Until now, I have refrained from intervening in the upcoming leadership election — but the time has come.

Kemi Badenoch has spent weeks positioning herself as tough on immigration.

But in 2018 she campaigned in Parliament to increase legal migration, and was the biggest champion for students bringing in dependents.

I don’t believe a word that she says on anything.

Formerly a man that believed in nothing, Robert Jenrick now pitches himself as the great hardliner.

This is almost certainly done for political gain and not out of conviction. He will divide the party.

I doubt that Jenrick will last long if he wins.

The Conservative Party is split down the middle and the brand is completely broken.

Why are Farage’s views relevant? Because, if they had the option, a large number of Tory members would probably vote for him as leader. According to a survey of members by ConservativeHome carried out after the election in July, 36% of members favour an electoral pact with Reform UK at the next election, 12% favour a full merger, and only half of them would rule out any form of deal or pact.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is backed by more voters as having the qualities needed to be a good prime minister than any of the four Tory leadership candidates, according to new polling by Ipsos reported in the Standard.

But voters are also far more likely to say Farage does not have the qualities needed to be a good PM than any of the Tory candidates, the same polling shows.

Looking at net scores on this measure (those who say they would be a good PM, minus those who say they would not), Farage does worse than all the Tory leadership candidates – although the only one, Tom Tugendhat, has a big lead over him.

According to the Ipsos figures, Farage has 24% of people saying he would be a good PM, 62% saying he wouldn’t, giving him a net score of -38.

Robert Jenrick is the next worse on this measure. Some 10% think he would be good, 47% say he wouldn’t, giving him a net score of -37.

Kemi Badenoch’s ratings are similar. Som 11% think she would be good, 45% say she wouldn’t, giving her a net score of -34.

James Cleverly has most positive support of the four leadership candidates, with 15% saying he would be a good PM. But 46% say he wouldn’t, making a net score of -31.

Tom Tugendhat has 12% of people saying he would be good. But, perhaps because he is less well known than the others, only 37% say he would be a bad PM, making a net score of -25.

Richard Fuller, the Conservative party chair, has ruled out changing the timetable for the leadership contest so the new leader can be in place in time for the budget on Wednesday 30 October.

Yesterday Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat both said they wanted the end date brought forward. Kemi Badenoch has said she is happy with the schedule already agreed.

It has been reported that senior figures in the party are talking about cutting the time allocated for the members’ ballot, so the new leader can respond to the budget.

But Fuller told BBC Breakfast today the timetable would not change. He said:

We had this debate some months ago. I think we had a very long discussion between the voluntary party and the 1922 Committee, which represents MPs.

The 1922 Committee wanted a longer campaign. They wanted to have four candidates here at conference.

And the logistics of that mean that when we whittle it down to two and it goes to the members, there’s a period of time for the members to vote, and my job is to make sure that members have enough time to get their ballot papers and return their ballot papers, and that’s why we ended up with the time frame we have.

Asked if that meant “no change”, Fuller replied: “No change.”

Labour has called for an investigation into £75,000 of donations to Tory leadership contender Robert Jenrick, saying it had “serious concerns” about where the money originally came from, PA Media reports. PA says:

Jenrick, the frontrunner for the Conservative leadership, received three donations of £25,000 in July from The Spott Fitness, a fitness coaching app provider.

As first reported by the Tortoise news website, the company’s latest accounts show it has no employees, has never made a profit and has more than £300,000 of debts, and in January it registered a loan from Centrovalli, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands.

The ownership of companies registered in the British Virgin Islands is not made public, leading Labour to question where the money donated to Jenrick ultimately came from.

Party chair Ellie Reeves said in a letter to the Electoral Commission: “Donations to MPs must come from sources registered in the UK. It is clear that Mr Jenrick has serious questions to answer about the origin of these funds and their legality.”

A source close to Jenrick’s campaign dismissed Labour’s request as “nonsense”, saying it served to “prove who Labour fear the most”.

Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, Jenrick insisted no laws had been broken. He said: “As I understand it, this is a fitness company that operates in the UK. It’s a perfectly legal and valid donation under British law and we’ve set it out in the public domain in the way that one does with donations.”

Good morning. The Conservative party conference is essentially a four-day hustings event this year, but there are hustings within hustings and some of the most important are the Q&As taking place on the main conference stage. This afternoon Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat are up; tomorrow it’s Robert Jenrick and James Cleverly.

There is not a lot of non-leadership action at the conference, but today we’re also getting Liz Truss, the former PM, and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor she brought in to repair the damage caused by her mini-budget. It will be interesting to see what sort of reception Truss gets. The conference slogan is “review and rebuild”, and yesterday there was a session in the conference hall devoted to the general election. But, when talking about why they lost, there are almost no Tories willing to admit the obvious – which is that between 2019 and 2022 and party gave up governing properly and instead decided to stage a ‘Who can be the worst prime minister ever?’ contest, and that as a result its poll ratings dropped like a stone. None of the four leadership candidates are addressing this.

But this morning Jenrick, the bookmakers’ favourite in the contest, is talking about the European convention on human rights. He is the only candidate firmly committed to withdrawal and he has got a new slogan to publicise this. Co-opting the spirit of Brexit, he is telling members it’s leave or remain. (Jenrick, of course, voted remain in 2016; at that point he was a Cameroon centrist, not a rightwing Brexiter.)

In a story for the Daily Telegraph, Ben Riley-Smith has extracts from what Jenrick will say on this at a rally this morning. Jenrick will tell Tories that it’s not just leave or remain; it is leave or die for the party.

Our party’s survival rests on restoring our credibility on immigration. If we continue to duck and dance around this question our party has no future.

Despite what others might falsely claim, we’ve never had a legal cap on legal migration. Unless we introduce one – where no visas will be issued unless net migration is in the tens of thousands or lower – we will be powerless to end the cycle of broken promises. Anyone who is not prepared to commit to a specific cap just doesn’t understand the depth of public anger.

I am not prepared to gamble the house on some five-year review process that may or may not see us doing what is obviously necessary. I have a plan ready now: leave the ECHR and introduce a legally binding cap on legal migration.

The choice is clear, it’s leave or remain. In fact it’s more than that – it is leave or die. If we don’t do this now, we’ll never restore the public’s trust and there’s every chance that Reform will grow and grow and condemn us to obscurity.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Robert Jenrick is due to speak at a conference rally.

9.30am: Jeremy Hunt, the shadow chancellor, takes part in a Q&A on the conference stage.

9.50am: Members debates take place, covering immigration, free speech, housebuilding and the economy. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, is speaking.

10.30am: Jenrick takes part in a Q&A at a Conservative Women’s Organisation fringe. At 11.15 Kemi Badenoch is taking part in a Q&A.

10.45am: Michael Gove, the former levelling up secretary, takes part in a Q&A at an IPPR North and Onward fringe.

11am: Jenrick speaks at a European Research Group fringe.

12.30pm: Liz Truss, the former PM, takes part in a Q&A at a fringe meeting.

2pm: Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat take part in a Q&A on the conference stage.

2pm: James Cleverly takes part in a Q&A at a a Conservative Women’s Organisation fringe.

3pm: Cleverly takes part in a Q&A at on Onward fringe.

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