Kwasi Kwarteng dismisses row leading to 45% tax rate U-turn as ‘a little turbulence’ in Tory conference speech– UK politics live | Politics

Education minister Andrea Jenkyns has been mocked on social media after she told a fringe event at the Conservative party conference that the current education system would rather young people get a degree in “Harry Potter studies” than in construction.

Jenkyns, minister for skills, further and higher education, told her audience that students were being fed a diet of “critical race theory, anti-British history and sociological Marxism” in universities, and she promised a government clear out of low quality courses.

Jenkyns, who was memorably photographed sticking up her middle finger at protestors after Boris Johnson’s resignation speech, told the Bruges Group event: “A skilled modern economy competing on the global stage requires technical skills just as much as it needs graduates.

“Yet the current system would rather our young people get a degree in Harry Potter studies than the apprenticeships shaping construction. It doesn’t take magic powers to work out that this is wrong, which is why the government is committed to putting the broomstick to good use and carrying out a spring clean of low quality courses.”

Sam Freedman, former senior policy adviser at the Department for Education, responded on Twitter: “Number of students currently studying architecture, building, planning and engineering = 245,395. Number currently studying ‘Harry Potter Studies’ = 0.”

Badenoch urges Tories to unite behind Truss, and to express concerns in private, not through media

Andrew Sparrow

Kemi Badenoch, the new international trade secretary, got a tremendous round of applause when she arrived for her session on stage. Some surveys suggested that, if she had been on the final ballot, she would have won the Tory leadership. She was taking part in a Q&A, rather than delivering a speech, and she used it to appeal for unity. She also urged MPs with concerns about policy to express them in private, not through the media. She said:

As a party, we need to get behind the prime minister because if you don’t do that, then none of that …

We need unity. And we need to be able to have dissent in a grown-up fashion. I think, when other people have problems with policy, I think there is a way of communicating it and not necessarily rushing to the first TV studio to let everybody know how angry you are.

Some of the people who have done this are my friends, but it is not helpful for the whole party. So, the party needs to come together. But we also need to remember who our real opponents are and that’s the Labour party.

That’s all from me for today. My colleague Nadeem Badshah is taking over now.

Lockdown at Tory conference lifted after security alert lasting around 90 minutes

Rajeev Syal

The Conservative party conference centre was locked down for about an hour and a half due to a security scare.

Police locked all entrances and exits at about 3.30pm with ministers among those forced to wait outside. The lockdown caused widespread disruption to events inside and outside the conference venue, which is being held at Birmingham’s International Convention Centre.

The type of the security scare is unknown.

West Midlands Police tweeted this to alert people.

And just after 5pm the police said the lockdown had been lifted.

While it is routine at party conferences for police to temporarily restrict access for security reasons, it is unusual for a lockdown to be imposed for more than half an hour.

Conservative ministers have become increasingly exasperated by the policing of the event. Police have allowed noisy protestors to continue to approach delegates as they enter the complex.

Kwarteng’s speech – verdict from Twitter commentariat

Ben Quinn

While much of the response inside the hall where Kwasi Kwarteng was delivering his speech appeared muted – with one of the loudest cheers reserved for repealing EU laws – media commentators were left underwhelmed by one of the shortest conference speeches delivered by a chancellor in modern times.

My colleague Rafael Behr says Kwarteng should have kept the speech to under five minutes.

James Forsyth from the Spectator says not announcing new policy was sensible.

George Eaton from the New Statesman says the speech was empty.

Tom Newton Dunn from Talk TV says he does not think the speech will impress Tories.

Hatty Collier from the i says Kwarteng was using understatement.

Freddie Hayward from the New Statesman says the speech was contradictory.

My colleague Jessica Elgot makes the same point.

Kevin Schofield from Huffpost UK points out what’s missing.

My colleague John Crace says it was vacuous.

Duncan Weldon, the economist and former BBC journalist, decided that the speech’s narrative was a confused one.

The broadcaster Sangita Myska says most of the speech sounded like rehash.

Sam Coates, deputy political editor at Sky News, picks up on how the chancellor’s words were an implicit criticism of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor.

My colleague Gaby Hinsliff says Kwarteng mostly ignored the problems with the mini-budget.

Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror was particularly scathing.

And Christopher Hope had picked up on the initial reaction in the room as Kwarteng arrived.

It is hard to think of a precedent for a chancellor delivering a party conference speech with absolutely no announcement of any kind in it. That speech was a news desert, devoid of anything new in terms of policy – or even language that move the argument into new terrain. I’m guessing, but I suspect perhaps there was an announcement pencilled in – that Liz Truss has pilfered it for her own speech on Wednesday. That would, at least, be logical; collectively they may have decided that there was no point wasting an announcement today, when the news cycle is dominated by the U-turn. The alternative – that Kwarteng just turned up with nothing to say – seems less likely.

Instead, all we got was a summary of the economic approach set out by Liz Truss during the Tory leadership campaign, and by Kwarteng in his mini-budget statement. But Kwarteng did not make it sound any more credible today than it has done in the past. He claimed the Conservative party had reversed “the story of national decline” when it came into office in 2010 – while at the same time explaining how the Truss government was having to reverse misakes made by the Tories over the past 12 years.

If the content was feeble, the delivery was even worse. Kwarteng sounded nervous, and he was rushing through it as if he could not wait to be off. He did not even seem to have worked out where the applause lines were meant to come.

Earlier I said the challenge facing Kwarteng with this speech was to show that he still has authority as a chancellor. (See 3.05pm.) It didn’t. If anything, it will have made his plight even worse.

Kwarteng says the UK will review, replace or repeal retained EU law “holding our country back”.