Badenoch to close Tory conference with ‘battle for the soul of this nation’ and tax-cut pitch
The Conservative leader’s keynote will centre on cutting inheritance tax and halving employers’ national insurance for workers aged 21 to 24, paid for from more than £30 billion in welfare savings, under what the party calls its Conservative savings plan.
Kemi Badenoch will use her keynote speech to the Conservative Party conference on Wednesday to declare that Britain faces a “battle for the soul of this nation”, as she sets out tax cuts she says would put money back in the pockets of young workers and bereaved families.
“There is a fight coming that we have not seen in this country for more than half a century,” she will say, according to the pre-speech briefing. “It will be a battle for the soul of this nation that goes to the very core of who we are and what kind of country we want to be.” She will accuse Labour of believing that people’s “income, pension and savings are theirs to take”.
The centrepiece of the speech is expected to be a cut to inheritance tax, the levy she has called “immoral” and which she has described as “unreal”. At present, the tax is charged at 40 per cent on the value of an estate above £325,000, or above £500,000 where a home is passed to a direct descendant, and a couple can combine their allowances to pass on up to £1 million to their children without any tax falling due.
There is a fight coming that we have not seen in this country for more than half a century. It will be a battle for the soul of this nation.Kemi Badenoch, remarks trailed ahead of her Conservative Party conference speech, 7 October 2026
Senior Tories have said she is not expected to announce the outright abolition of the tax because it would be too expensive. Under her “golden rule”, which requires half of all savings made by a future Conservative government to be put into reducing the deficit, full abolition would require about £22 billion in savings. Instead she is expected to cut the 40 per cent rate or lift the threshold at which the tax kicks in. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated that cutting the rate to 35 per cent would cost £2 billion a year, while raising the main threshold to £450,000 would cost about £3.5 billion.
The tax raised £8.5 billion last year and the amount collected is forecast to reach £15 billion by 2030. It is levied on fewer than 5 per cent of estates, but that share is expected to rise to one in ten by 2030 as frozen thresholds drag more families into the net.
Badenoch will also pledge to halve employers’ national insurance for workers aged 21 to 24, from 15 per cent to 7.5 per cent, as part of a rescue plan for young people. The flat rate cut would cost £3.25 billion before extra tax receipts and lower universal credit spending are counted, falling to a “dynamic” cost of £2.3 billion by 2029-30. The party says it would save companies an average of £1,545 for every young worker they employ, and estimates it would create 33,600 jobs by the end of the decade.
“Young people have a much worse problem than everybody else,” Badenoch told the BBC, pointing to what she called a graduate recruitment crisis. Latest Office for National Statistics figures show 981,000 young people aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment or training between April and June. The pledge builds on last week’s “tough love” offer under which under-25s who have not worked continuously for six months would be barred from moving straight from school onto benefits.
She told GB News ahead of the speech: “We are not announcing anything until we’ve found the money for it. We are a fiscally responsible party.” The tax cuts would be paid for with more than £30 billion in welfare cuts that would also contribute to paying down Britain’s £3 trillion debt, under what the party calls the Conservative savings plan.
Labour’s chair, Bridget Phillipson, said the Conservatives were “stuck in the past and remains completely out of touch with what people across Britain want to see”, adding: “Last week Andy Burnham set out a plan to bring back hope to Britain. Kemi Badenoch wants to drag our country back to a politics that let so many people down over the past 40 years.”
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