Kemi Badenoch pledges to abolish stamp duty on all home sales in Tory conference speech: Live updates

The Government could launch a crackdown on some of the chants used at pro-Palestine protests, Sir Keir Starmer has said.

The Prime Minister’s intervention came after pro-Gaza marchers went ahead with demonstrations on Tuesday, the second anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel.

The anniversary came less than a week after knife-wielding terrorist Jihad Al-Shamie, 35, killed two men at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Manchester.

During a trade mission to India, Sir Keir was asked what action he would take after the protesters defied his calls to step down their demonstration on the anniversary of October 7.

He pointed to work being carried out by Shabana Mahmood to review protest laws, adding: “I’ve asked the Home Secretary to look more broadly at what other powers are available, how they’re being used, and whether they should be changed in any way.

“I think we need to go further than that in relation to some of the chants that are going on at some of these protests.”

Labour accused Mrs Badenoch of being in “complete denial” after her speech to the Conservative party conference.

Anna Turley, Labour’s chairwoman, said: “Kemi Badenoch is in complete denial. The public saw the Tories’ disastrous blueprint for Britain across their 14 years of failure in government – and the Conservatives still won’t apologise for the mess they left.

“Kemi Badenoch set herself a new ‘golden economic rule’ today and broke it immediately. It’s the same old Tories, with the same old policies without a plan. They didn’t work then and you can’t trust them now.”

… but she still has to find up to £40bn:

Green Party leader Zack Polanski said Mrs Badenoch had been “speaking to the room, not listening to the nation”.

He said: “While she got rounds of applause from men in suits sitting in front of her, she still sounds painfully out of touch with those dressed and ready to work for this country.”

He said blaming immigrants was a distraction.

The Conservatives estimate that scrapping VAT on private schools, reversing changes to inheritance tax for farms and scrapping the carbon tax as well as other conference promises would cost a total of £21.1 billion.

But they say shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride had identified £47 billion of savings in his own conference speech on Monday.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has estimated that abolishing stamp duty on primary residences will cost around £4.5 billion.

But, claiming that chancellor Rachel Reeves was planning a significant increase in stamp duty, the Conservatives said they had “cautiously” estimated that the policy would cost £9 billion.

Earlier this year, an expert from the Tony Blair Institute argued that stamp duty needed reforming:

After Kemi Badenoch’s policy-heavy conference speech, I would have expected as a journalist to have an inbox thronging with emails.

Usually, the leader of the Conservative Party pledging everything from abolishing stamp duty to banning doctors’ strikes would warrant responses from all corners of the think tank and lobbying worlds.

But just three think tanks have today sent responses to the stamp duty announcement, all fans of Ms Badenoch’s policy.

And, other than lines from Labour and the Greens, barely anyone seems to have bothered with a response to Ms Badenoch’s speech at all.