Chris Mason: Tories united behind Badenoch - but party still needs to win over voters

In tone, connection and nationalist enthusiasm for the argument, Badenoch and Andy Burnham are rather the opposition with their contiguous predecessors Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer. Policy announcements aside, what stood retired successful this code for maine was a broader point. Badenoch did speech astir immigration, but not astatine length. She mostly near the contented – and the Conservative argumentation to retreat from the European Convention connected Human Rights, arsenic Reform besides advocates - to her shadiness location caput Chris Philp who spoke earlier her. This code felt similar Badenoch revelling successful pointing astatine the cleanable hull of the Conservative ship, what she sees arsenic those barnacles removed, not slightest the high-profile defections of Jenrick and Suella Braverman. Braverman has argued that, fixed her Asian heritage, "I'm not English". "I'm arrogant to beryllium British. My household and ancestors person a nexus to Britain which spans centuries. But successful nary mode are we English," she wrote connected societal media past month, external, adding: "Englishness is an ethnicity." Badenoch expressed her idiosyncratic fury astatine this, saying that arsenic the parent of mixed-race children "I don't privation to explicate to my son, erstwhile we're watching our superb England squad play football, that immoderate radical don't deliberation our achromatic players are English". There was a striking glee and choler successful her reflections astir Reform UK. She sought to represent them arsenic sleazy and pointedly decided to thin into an statement of caller months astir Englishness. The recurring message, contiguous and implicit the past fewer days, is Badenoch cannot