Britain’s political system is broken and voters are exhausted, Rishi Sunak will say on Wednesday as he struggles to wrestle back control of the agenda at a Conservative conference dominated by rival factions, leadership posturing and speculation about HS2.
However, the prime minister faces claims that, after 13 years of Tory government, many of the problems he diagnoses in Westminster, including social care, the housing crisis and the NHS, are of his party’s own making.
In his speech, Sunak will say: “There is the undeniable sense that politics just doesn’t work the way it should … a feeling that Westminster is a broken system … It isn’t anger, it is an exhaustion with politics. In particular, politicians saying things, and then nothing ever changing.”
He has battled to keep an often chaotic conference in Manchester on track as senior Tories, including Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch and Liz Truss, jostled for the limelight, while ministers admitted privately they doubt their party’s chances at next year’s election.
Braverman meanwhile, in a populist speech clearly intended to cement her position as a standard bearer of the Conservative right, warned of a “hurricane” of mass migration and attacked the “luxury beliefs” of liberal-leaning people.
An embattled-sounding Sunak insisted on Tuesday he would still be in office by the time of the next party conferences, telling broadcasters he was willing to be unpopular to drive through change. “I’m prepared to persuade people that what I’m doing is right,” he said.
In a round of interviews, the prime minister again repeatedly ducked questions on his plan to scrap the northern leg of HS2 from Birmingham to Manchester, with the savings reinvested in regional transport links, which he is set to announce on Wednesday.
The HS2 scheme was given a budget of £55.7bn in 2015 but costs have ballooned, with an estimate of up to £98bn – in 2019 prices – in 2020. Since then, soaring inflation will have pushed costs even higher.
“I take the time to get it right and do what I think is right for the country. I think it’s right that I’m not going to get forced into making premature decisions. Not on something that’s so important, that costs this country tens of billions of pounds,” he said.
However, the scrapping of the Tories’ flagship levelling up infrastructure project has divided the party, with West Midlands mayor Andy Street, the most powerful Conservative outside Westminster, angrily demanding a rethink and not ruling out resignation.
Street suggested that axing the Manchester leg of the rail link while holding a conference in Manchester would be “an incredible political gaffe” which Labour would use to claim the prime minister had decided to “shaft the north”.
Senior rail industry sources said that Sunak also plans to terminate the line at Euston, in central London, rather than the western suburb of Old Oak Common.
In a sign of disquiet among some Conservatives at the home secretary’s openly hard-right and populist tone, Braverman’s speech to conference – the main event of the day – was disrupted when Andrew Boff, a Conservative member of the London Assembly, was hauled out by security guards.
Boff, sitting in the audience, had quietly accused the home secretary of “talking rubbish” about gender ideology and described her remarks as a “homophobic rant”.
Boff told reporters afterwards: “This home secretary was basically vilifying gay people and trans people by this attack on LGBT ideology, or gender ideology. It is fictitious, it is ridiculous.”
Braverman, whose speech was cheered by diehard Tory activists, said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Boff’s heckles were “silly” but he “should be forgiven” and allowed back into conference.
In a claim that will anger lawyers, judges and some within her own party, the home secretary told delegates that the Human Rights Act should be renamed the “Criminal Rights Act”.
She argued that “Britain would go properly woke” under a Labour government, with people “chased out of their jobs for saying that a man can’t be a woman” and “scolded for rejecting that they are beneficiaries of institutional racism”.
In a separate development, Sunak hinted that Nigel Farage could be welcomed back into the “broad church” of the Conservative party – only for the former Ukip leader to say he was not interested.
In his speech to conference, Sunak will not claim any responsibility for the short-term focus of the last 13 years, saying the political system hasn’t been functioning properly since the 1990s. “Politicians spent more time campaigning for change than actually delivering it,” he will say.
The prime minister also turns his fire on the Labour party, a more frequent focus of Tory attacks at this conference than in recent years as the party gears itself up to fight the general election.
“The Labour party have set out their stall: to do and say as little as possible and hope no one notices,” he said. They want to take people’s votes for granted and keep doing politics the same old way. It is a bet on people’s apathy. It does not speak to any higher purpose, or brighter future.”
However, Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, said: “We’ve had 13 years of Tory failure. Rishi Sunak isn’t a cure for that failure – he’s a product of it. And every day the Tories stay in power it all just carries on.
“The prime minister is too weak to take on all the competing factions and contenders already jockeying to replace him. The sooner the election comes the better because it’s time to turn the page on the Tory years and start to rebuild Britain.”
The former Tory business minister Anna Soubry, who quit the party in 2019, said: “Sunak’s analysis is extraordinary given we’ve had conservative led governments for the majority of the last 30 years. Far from fixing our broken politics, Sunak and co have worsened the fractures. Speech after speech at his party’s conference has lacked any sort of vision or effort to bring people together to tackle the huge issues our country faces.”
Ministers such as Braverman, in speeches signed off by the PM, had “spewed out rhetoric, mad conspiracy theories and down right lies”, she said.
”People are indeed fed up – of this incompetent, clapped out and morally bankrupt government who are more interested in pandering to the likes of Nigel Farage than meeting the needs of ordinary folk facing another difficult winter.”
