|  | | Tuesday, 6 October | | | Britons tend to feel Tories haven’t changed under Badenoch | | | | Kemi Badenoch has been using this year’s Tory party conference to set out the ways in which the party has changed from its time in government, saying “we have to be different, different from Labour and different from the party we were two years ago”. | |
| | However, at present, just 30% of Britons believe the party has changed at least a fair amount under her leadership, including only 7% feeling the party has changed a great deal. By contrast, 46% see little to no difference between the Conservative Party of today and the Conservative Party that lost the 2024 election. | |
| | Conservative voters are the most likely to believe the party has changed, with 62% feeling the party is at least fairly different to two years ago, relative to 38% of Reform voters, 29% of Lib Dems, 21% of Labour voters and 14% of Green voters. | |
| | | | | | | | In order to demonstrate her changed Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch has produced a pamphlet entitled “The Right Way”, which sets out her philosophy, including that the “next Conservative government will have one central principle: business, not government, creates growth”. | |
| | Britons tend to agree with this idea, with 38% feeling businesses are better at driving growth than government, relative to a mere 8% believing that governments are more effective at generating growth. A further 18% feel both businesses and governments are equally adept at this task. | |
| | That Badenoch’s view is shared by most Conservative and Reform UK voters (61%) is perhaps not so surprising, but Labour voters are also more likely to feel growth is more down to businesses (30%) than governments (10%). | |
| | | | | | | | Not just has defence been today’s main theme at the Tory party conference, with their proposal to create an Israeli-style Iron Dome missile defence system grabbing headlines, but further arrests surrounding the RAF Fairford incident have suggested the involvement of a foreign actor. | |
| | As to who Britons see as posing the biggest threat to the UK today, Russia tops the list, with 46% identifying them as the number one international risk. This compares to 12% believing the US is the biggest threat to the UK, 11% feeling this title falls to Iran and no more than 5% for any other country. | |
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