It’s ok everyone conference season is nearly over. The Lib Dems have hung up their bucket and spades; Labour has gone home to rave about their new PM and his plan, and now it’s the turn of the Conservatives to bounce into Birmingham.
It’s a very different party from the one that skulked into Manchester last year. There is a huge amount of optimism around their leader and her plan, but in the background, there is still a slight nervousness around whether this recovery is real and they have what they need to win again.
So, while the cameras chase Kemi around the conference centre, here are a few names we will be watching.
New kids on the front bench
Rebecca Paul MP
The MP for Reigate is a tax expert by trade, with a career that took her through EY and then to director of tax at Diageo. So, she knows her way around a spreadsheet and the drinks cabinet (in a professional sense). We can think of worse qualifications for Shadow Culture Secretary.
Paul made her name picking the Assisted Dying bill apart line by line in committee and has not been shy about wading into the trans debate. She knows the details and isn’t worried about a scrap. Both will come in handy in the culture brief.
Her majority in Reigate is just over 3,000, so she is both a rising star and a sandbag on the Blue Wall. She has two outings next Tuesday, one on press freedom and one on British fashion.
Harriet Cross MP
Born in Harrogate, raised in West Cork and settled in Aberdeenshire, Cross worked as a chartered rural surveyor across the North East and the Highlands before Westminster. She is also a former competitive sprinter turned ultramarathon runner. Which, frankly, sounds like ideal preparation for life in the Whips’ Office.
The new Shadow Scottish Secretary is also doubling up as a shadow energy minister. With thousands of oil and gas jobs on her patch, the energy brief is particularly relevant. She has even been happy to find common cause with GMB boss Gary Smith on the energy transition. Not a sentence you read often about a Tory.
She holds Gordon and Buchan by just 878 votes. She opens the conference on Sunday on the Union panel. So, no pressure there then.
Dr Ben Spencer MP
Every conference has its buzzword and this year it is AI. Holding that brief is Ben Spencer, the MP for Runnymede and Weybridge and a former consultant psychiatrist, complete with a PhD on decision-making capacity. Useful, given some of the decisions made in Westminster over the last few years.
He has two sessions of his own, AI and jobs and AI and defence. Kemi Badenoch takes the main stage on Monday to talk about AI in healthcare, so the leadership clearly wants to own this space. Having a former NHS doctor on the brief also gives the Tories someone who can talk about AI without sounding like they have just discovered Claude.
Either way expect to hear a lot more from the Tories on AI. If he makes a success of it, don’t be surprised to see him move up again. Given his background, health would be the obvious next stop.
The ones running things, or trying to
Paul Bristow
A Conservative who runs something. Bristow lost his Peterborough seat in 2024 and was back in business less than a year later as Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Before Parliament he worked in PR and chaired the Association of Professional Political Consultants. One of our own, then. We will try not to be biased.
The interesting bit is how he won. He took the mayoralty with 28.4 percent of the vote and finished more than 10,000 votes ahead of Reform. For a Conservative taking on Reform, it’s a result everyone should have been paying attention to. His agenda leans heavily on roads and infrastructure, including dualling key A roads and scrapping several Greater Cambridge Partnership schemes.
He is currently listed as invited to a Tuesday LGA fringe. If he turns up, expect a queue of colleagues looking to learn what he has mastered.
Katy Bourne
Bourne built and sold a leisure and dance business before swapping the dancefloor for politics. She is now in her fourth term as Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner, which makes her the longest serving female PCC in the country.
To land the nomination for Sussex’s first mayor, she saw off two former MPs, Tim Loughton and Sally-Ann Hart. She also had a helpful endorsement from a certain Andrew Griffith, now Shadow Chancellor. Friends in high places never hurt.
The election is now set for 2028. Win it and she will become one of the most powerful Conservatives outside Westminster, with policing, transport and growth all under one roof. Catch her at SME Day on Tuesday.
Ben Fletcher
A slight wildcard, Fletcher is the Conservative candidate for Mayor of Cheshire and Warrington, and he has come to Birmingham with a big number. He wants 50,000 new homes, backed by new development corporations for Crewe, Warrington and Ellesmere Port, in a region where homes now cost around eight times the average salary.
He gets a chance to make the case alongside Onward’s Simon Clarke on Monday. Cheshire and Warrington is a useful territory to watch: a mix of towns, suburbs, and more affluent patches where the Conservatives need to work out how to put their coalition back together.
