Financial Services Reporter Eleanor Myers
Andrew Griffith will be stepping up this party conference, having been promoted to shadow chancellor earlier this year to replace his more mild-mannered colleague Mel Stride.
Griffith was a bigwig in business before he entered parliament, and as a former City minister, I’ll be watching whether he focuses his ire on the prospect of Labour raising bank taxes in the budget, which is now less than a month away.
Griffith will make his big speech on how to get Britain growing again at 2 p.m. Monday. Growth was the favored buzzword of former Chancellor Rachel Reeves, and has been heartily adopted by her successor John Healey, although how to achieve it remains a challenge amid soaring debt and rising interest rates. I’m interested to see whether the Conservatives propose a solution.
Senior Technology Reporter Frank Hersey
This conference is a chance for Badenoch’s team to establish any sort of differentiation between Tory tech policy and that of the other parties. This has been getting harder as parties’ approaches have coalesced. Labour committed to a pro-growth agenda for AI under former Prime Minister Keir Starmer with planned regulatory reforms to match. Tory plans for a social media ban for under-16s were eventually (and reluctantly) grasped by Labour. The Tories were further hemmed in by Reform banking the low-tax, low-regulation space.
I’ll be looking to see if the party can get ahead in any policy areas or if it has to pick new ones to do so. Among all the parties, there’s perhaps most interest in what the Conservatives say on tech — as their policy ideas in this space are feeling overdue.
Senior Trade Reporter Sophie Inge
The fightback against Burnham’s pledge to explore closer ties with the EU is expected to continue in Birmingham, after Badenoch warned that Britain shouldn’t be “having arguments which started 10 years ago.”
Deputy Leader Alex Burghart has already pledged to “reverse” the Brexit reset, warning that plans for an agrifood deal with the bloc risk undermining the U.K.’s trading relationship with the U.S., among other countries.