Kemi Badenoch has been warned that she has a “death wish” for the Conservative Party with her new hard right policies of mass deportations and withdrawing from an international treaty on human rights.
The warning from former Tory attorney general Dominic Grieve came as Ms Badenoch made the move in a bid to reverse her party’s decline in the face of the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
As the Conservative Party conference in Manchester opened this weekend, the party’s leader confirmed that she would withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) if she won the next general election.
The policy came with an added pledge of deporting 150,000 foreign criminals and illegal immigrants a year – the equivalent of 500 a day, with no clear detail on where they would be sent.
This followed the announcement last week that they would also repeal the Climate Change Act and scrap net zero policies.
Mr Grieve said: “I think it is a death wish for the Conservatives to essentially make them the same as Reform and making them indistinguishable.”
He described the idea that leaving the ECHR would end the migration crisis as “complete fantasy” claiming that the convention has “only a marginal effect” compared to other agreements like the Refugee Convention.
“It just makes the Conservatives look incoherent,” he blasted.
The moves aped those already made by Nigel Farage’s Reform at the Tories attempted to outflank him on the populist right under Ms Badenoch’s leadership.
With her party stranded on 16 per cent, less than half Reform’s 34 per cent, Ms Badenoch tried to rally her party with a speech on day one of the conference.
Ms Badenoch said the Conservatives could bring the UK back together by combining “strong borders with a shared culture”.
Ms Badenoch told the party’s conference in Manchester: “Well-meaning treaties and statutes, like the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Convention on action against Trafficking, drafted with the best of intentions in generations gone by, and more recent additions like the Modern Slavery Act, are now being used in ways never intended by their original authors.
Justifying her plans, she said: “Britain needs deep change, but I reject the politics that everything must go, that everything must be torn down, that everything is broken.
“But if we leave it to Labour or Reform, Britain will be divided.
“Only the Conservatives can bring this country back together.
“This is a battle we must win by combining secure borders with a shared culture, strong values and the confidence of a great nation.
“We can win the debate and win the next election.”
In a video Ms Badenoch proposed a new deportation force based on the controversial ICE agents used by Trump in the US.
She also suggested that the party could restrict the right to protest with an attack on those protesting in favour of Palestine in the wake of murders of Jews in Manchester.
British streets must not become a “theatre for intimidation”, Kemi Badenoch has said.
The Tory leader said the Conservative Party stood in solidarity with the Jewish community.
Mrs Badenoch told the party’s conference in Manchester: “We cannot import and tolerate values hostile to our own.
“We must now draw a line and say that in Britain you can think what you like, and within the bounds of the law you can say what you like, but you have no right to turn our streets into the theatres of intimidation, and we will not let you do so any more.
“To our Jewish friends, we stand with you shoulder to shoulder. You are part of the fabric of Britain and you always will be.”
But with the party staring at oblivion and question marks over her own future as leader, Ms Badenoch tried to strike a positive note.
She said: “We can win the debate and the next election.”
She added: “We have a mountain to climb but we have a song in our heart and we are up for the fight.”
But the huge Manchester Central conference centre was noticeably quiet on the first day with many corporate sponsors staying away and relatively few members and others attending what would normally be a crowded conference.
Half empty trains went from London to Manchester while hotels still were offering rooms at off-peak rates.
The only packed out meetings on the first day were fringe events for Sir James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick, the two men most likely to replace Ms Badenoch as leader.
The main focus of the event appeared to be harking back to Margaret Thatcher in the 100th anniversary year of her birth with a museum display of her clothes and letters in a prime spot normally filled by a major corporate sponsor.
Earlier, Ms Badenoch clashed repeatedly with Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC over where she would deport migrants to.
She described the question as “a self defeating argument” and said “it doesn’t matter all that matters is they should not be here.”
She implied that they could be deported back to countries like Syria, Iran and Afghanistan.
However, Ms Badenoch attempted to draw a line between her party and both Labour and Reform suggesting that she and the Tories do not buy into identity politics.
She claimed: “Both deal in grievance, both divide our country into tribes and labels. Both practise identity politics, which will destroy our country. “And I am saying no. No to division and no to identity politics.” She added: “What Britain needs is national unity. “I am black, I am a woman, I am a Conservative.”
