The Conservative Party's 2024 manifesto and its 2025 to 2026 opposition position read as documents from two different parties. Kemi Badenoch has not adjusted manifesto positions under opposition discipline. She has discarded them and replaced them with harder alternatives. The pattern is not refinement. It is capitulation to Reform UK.
On climate the manifesto reaffirmed the 2050 net zero target as legally binding with small modular reactors, carbon capture clusters and trebled offshore wind. On 18 March 2025 Badenoch formally abandoned the target, calling it impossible and fantasy politics. This ended the cross party consensus that had held since Theresa May legislated the goal in 2019. The Conservatives did not amend the manifesto position. They discarded it.
On Europe the manifesto pledged Conservatives would remain within the European Convention on Human Rights, legislating only to disregard interim Rule 39 orders from Strasbourg. On 4 October 2025 Badenoch announced leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act is now official party policy, backed by a Shadow Cabinet endorsed legal review by Lord Wolfson KC. The manifesto position survived fifteen months.
On immigration the manifesto promised a binding annual cap on work and family visas, monthly Rwanda flights and full commencement of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. At the October 2025 conference Badenoch unveiled a plan to deport 750,000 illegal migrants over five years via a new UK removals force modelled on US ICE, permanent asylum bars on illegal entrants, abolition of the Immigration Tribunal and a refugee definition restricted to those persecuted by foreign governments. The manifesto framed immigration as an enforcement problem. The opposition policy reframes it as a removal operation.
On welfare the manifesto banked £12 billion of annual savings through tighter work capability assessments and PIP reforms for mental health conditions. By 2025 the Conservatives had expanded that to £23 billion of non pensioner welfare cuts, restricting PIP and sickness top ups to UK citizens only, mandating face to face assessments, and barring anxiety and ADHD from being treated as severe conditions. The manifesto's £12 billion was an austerity envelope. The opposition policy is an exclusion policy.
On the economy the manifesto promised £17 billion of tax cuts headlined by a 2p National Insurance cut, abolition of self employed NI, Triple Lock Plus and stamp duty relief for first time buyers. At the October 2025 conference Badenoch signalled a £47 billion package of public spending cuts with abolition of stamp duty on all primary residences. The manifesto offered targeted relief. The opposition is rebuilding a Thatcherite tax and state architecture.
On the NHS the manifesto committed unconditionally to free care at the point of use and 92,000 more nurses by 2030. As a leadership candidate Badenoch publicly floated insurance based alternatives and told an interviewer it might be that the public decide the NHS should no longer be free at point of use. The manifesto sold the existing funding model. The leader has questioned whether to sell it at all.
The silence is revealing. The manifesto's pledges on 2.5 per cent defence spending by 2030, 8,000 additional police officers, mandatory whole life orders, the Advanced British Standard, mandatory National Service at 18, English devolution by 2030 and a Backing Drivers Bill have all been left unmentioned. Either the party still holds them and does not think them worth campaigning on, or it does not hold them and has not said so.
This is not a party adjusting under opposition discipline. This is a party chasing Reform UK by occupying the ground Reform already holds. The Conservatives have abandoned net zero, questioned the NHS funding model, escalated welfare cuts from £12bn to £23bn, moved from cap and Rwanda to removal operations, and signalled £47bn spending cuts. They have left their commitments on defence, police, education and crime completely unmentioned. The 2024 manifesto is not being refined. It is being replaced. What the Conservatives have not shown is whether they believe in anything beyond what Reform voters want.