Kemi Badenoch pledges to scrap Stamp Duty as Tories desperately battle for attention

Kemi Badenoch has pledged to scrap Stamp Duty as she battled to claw back the spotlight onto her floundering party.

The Conservative leader sought to enliven a lacklustre party conference with a brazen speech on how the Tories were the only ones to undo the damage they inflicted during 14 years in power.

Her rabbit out of the hat was a pledge to abolish Stamp Duty, which she said was a "bad tax" that puts a drag on the housing market.

Ms Badenoch told Tory faithful in Manchester: "Stamp Duty is a bad tax. We must free up our housing market, because a society where no one can afford to buy or move is a society where social mobility is dead."

The small print later revealed it would only be axed for people's primary residences - and would still apply to second homes, properties bought by businesses and overseas buyers.

READ MORE: 9 bombshells from Kemi Badenoch speech from Stamp Duty to Farage 'pig' jibe

The move will benefit people buying expensive homes the most, as no Stamp Duty is paid on homes worth up to £125,000, rising as the property gets more expensive.

First-time buyers don't have to pay stamp duty if their new home costs less than £300,000.

The Tories estimate the plan would cost around £9billion a year, which they claim would be funded out of £47billion in spending cuts to welfare, foreign aid and the size of the civil service. But economists have warned that the planned cuts are vague and difficult to assess.

The pledge came at the end of a speech littered with policy ideas as Ms Badenoch tried to revive her party's dire poll ratings.

She lashed out about Labour and claimed that only the Tories could save the country from the steady decline caused by a "weak economy and weak borders" they presided over in office.

Ms Badenoch said she would reverse a number of Labour policies, including ending tax breaks for private schools and changes to inheritance tax for farms as she sought to give cash back to the wealthiest.

And she cantered through hard-line promises for mass deportations, to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, to scrap the Climate Change Act and to ban doctors from striking.

The Tory leader made only passing reference to Nigel Farage, whose Reform Party is hoovering up Tory voters, councillors and even MPs.

She accused him of "shaking the same magic money tree" as Jeremy Corbyn and Sir Ed Davey, in criticism likely to raise eyebrows in the wake of Liz Truss's tax-slashing mini-Budget.

Ms Badenoch said: "Reform promising free beer tomorrow, Jeremy Corbyn promising free jam, Lib Dems promising free lentils. All of them promising more spending. Blowing up the public finances.

"Whether it’s Starmer, Farage, Corbyn or Davey all these men are shaking the same magic money tree."

She added: "It’s irresponsible, it’s cynical, and it’s why Britain needs Conservatives back in charge."

In what appeared to be a veiled swipe at Mr Farage, she said: "We can’t beat them, simply by attacking them. As George Bernard Shaw said: ‘Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.’"

Anna Turley MP, Chair of the Labour Party, said: “ Kemi Badenoch is in complete denial. The public saw the Tories’ disastrous blueprint for Britain across their 14 years of failure in government - and the Conservatives still won’t apologise for the mess they left."

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey parked his tanks on Tory lawns with an appeal to moderate Conservatives appalled by the party's lurch to the right. to abandon Ms Badenoch.

He told them: "Her plans to tear up the Climate Change Act and withdraw from the ECHR show she is abandoning traditional British values of tolerance, decency and the rule of law."

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