Pro-Palestine marches have become ‘carnivals of hatred’, Badenoch tells Tory conference – as it happened

Aletha Adu is a Guardian political reporter.

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has urged his colleagues to get out of their suits and Westminster and “shame authorities into action” using social media videos.

Jenrick told a Tory conference fringe event his colleagues should not be focused on “merely making speeches in the oak panelled halls of the Palace of Westminster”.

When asked if he will show more of his family to the public in order to reach new voters, Jenrick said the Tories are facing a reckoning because “people are sick of politicians, and there’s a deep sense of anger and frustration in the country”.

In a rallying cry that sounded like a shadow leadership call, Jenrick told his colleagues:

Get out of a suit, get out of Westminster, raise the everyday issues that all of us care about, and get stuck in. Try and shame the authorities into action.

I do not believe that the role of Conservative politicians is merely making speeches in Westminster, in the oak panelled halls of the Palace of Westminster, and do not buy into this idea that being in opposition is pointless.

Citing a conversation he had with his taxi driver, Jenrick said there was a need to “engage the enemy more closely”.

In the same event, Jenrick appeared to indicate the entire Conservative party has to continue to not only apologise but prove that it has changed.

It comes after the party were urged to show “contrition” and “penitence” for their failures. Praising Matthew Syed’s remarks (see 2.55pm), Jenrick said:

Do we have to show that the Conservative party has changed? Yes. And it’s not going to be enough to make fine speeches or tweets. I always say that when I screw up at home, just apologising isn’t enough for my wife. You’ve got to demonstrate that you’re a different person.

Asked how the Tories can appeal to younger voters, Jenrick claimed Canada’s Conservative wing managed to gain support amongst young people, although they of course didn’t win, because they campaigned on housing.

The Conservative party got it wrong in the past. The new Conservative party should be one in which we are helping those people onto the housing ladder to have a stake in society and to get on the life.

Jenrick’s use of the term “new Conservatives” was interesting. Many Tories think Jenrick may become party leader within the next year, and if that were to happen, one option would be to call the party New Conservatives, just at Tony Blair called his party New Labour, to persuade voters it was changing.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has welcomed the government’s decision to give the police powers to restrict marches on the basis of their cumulative impact. In a statement, the BDBJ’s president, Phil Rosenberg, said they had been calling for this for months, and made their case again at a meeting with Keir Starmer and Shabana Mahmood on Friday.

He said:

The government’s decision to move ahead on giving police new powers around ‘cumulative impact’ in response to the deeply irresponsible and offensive protests we have seen in recent days following the terrorist attack at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation is a necessary start.

We have been calling for this for many months, and it was one of our key demands in the meeting with the prime minister and home secretary on Friday.

But the government now needs to go further. We will work with them to ensure that these and other measures are as effective as possible in protecting our community.

Campaigners are arguing that Shabana Mahmood’s plan to let the police restrict protests that have a cumulative impact (see 8.15am) ignores the fact that some protests are only effective because they get repeated.

This is from Will McCallum, co-executive director at Greenpeace UK.

Protest works because it is repetitive. If police had told the Suffragettes or civil rights activists ‘you’ve made your point’, they would never have won the victories we all enjoy today. The home secretary must immediately withdraw this dangerous step towards authoritarianism. Any review of protest laws must result in greater freedom for people to make their voices heard, not less.

And this is from Silkie Carlo, director of the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch.

Repeated demonstrations have long been tools for change in our country, from women’s rights to workers’ rights.

For the government to mount this new attack on protest at a time when many thousands of people on the right and left of politics are exercising their freedom to assemble appears like a cynical attempt to suppress dissent. It appears that successive governments are trying every trick in the book to further limit our right to demonstrate.

Your Party, the new leftwing party being set up by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, has criticised the plans to give the police new powers to restrict demonstrations. In a letter to supporters, it says:

Outrageous. This morning, the home secretary Shabana Mahmood announced new restrictions on the right to protest. Her target was clear: peaceful Palestine protesters standing up against British complicity in genocide.

We know why they’re doing this. Like the Tories before them, Labour know they’re complicit in Israel’s genocide. They know they can’t defend the indefensible. So they’re trying to crush dissent instead.

Your Party is still the organisation’s working title. It may get a new title after its inaugral conference next month.

In his own message, Corbyn has described the move as “a disgraceful assault on the right to protest”.

At the conference members are now having a debate. It is on the motion that “this house believes that freedom of speech is a fundamental pillar of democracy, and we need to create stronger protections for it in law”.

The debate started only about 30 minutes after Kemi Badenoch told the conference, in effect, she would like to ban the pro-Palestine marches that have been taking place regularly in London. (See 3.14pm.)

Toby Young, the commentator who runs the Free Speech Union and who was made a Tory peer by Kemi Badenoch, is on stage responding to points raised by the debate. But there are not many. The chair is calling people who have indicated their wish to speak, but around half the people he is calling do not seem to be hear.

In the media room at one point the conference feed panned away from the stage, and showed a view of the audience. The hall is virtually empty.

In the hall Young said that, although it was not party policy, he would like to see an amendment to the employment rights bill that would “make it unlawful for companies to discipline, fire, penalise employees for things they’ve said online, unless they’re less than a year old”.

Young did not declare his own interest in the matter. Seven years ago he was forced to resign from his post on the board of the Office for Students, a university standards watchdog, after complaints about offensive tweets and comments he had made in the past.

Badenoch said Labour and Reform UK were just “shouting at one another”. She went on:

One flings around the word racist and will not be realistic about what is going on.

The other whips up outrage, offering simplistic answers that will fall apart on first contact with reality.

That is not serious politics.

Conference, neither of those parties offers the leadership that Britain deserves.

The truth is that Labour and Reform are two sides of the same coin. Both deal in grievance, both divide our country into tribes and labels, both practice identity politics, which will destroy our country. And I am saying no to division and no to identity politics.

Badenoch says Wolfson has concluded that leaving the ECHR is not incompatible with the Good Friday agreement. She goes on:

I know that there will be particular challenges in Northern Ireland.

But difficulties are not a reason to avoid action. They are a reason to work harder to get it right.

She says she is going to ask Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, to carry out a review into union-wide implementation of the plan. That will be put to the people at the electon. She says it will be “a clear, thorough and robust plan, not the vague mush”.

Badenoch says Labour are wrong to claim that the Tories achieved nothing in office.

We slashed the deficit every year, so that when the pandemic hit, we had the means to weather the storm.

We reformed our schools to put rigour back into the curriculum, and today, a whole generation of young people will enter the world with better maths and literary skills than any generation before them.

We reformed welfare, we got people into work, four million new jobs were created, over a million new businesses.

She goes on to Brexit – claiming it has brought benefits.

We gave the British people a choice on our membership of the EU and we implemented that decison. And what followed? The fastest vaccine rollout in the West, billions of pounds worth of trade deals.

No other party would have done these things, but they were right for our country, and we can all be proud of them.

Badenoch says Yom Kippur is a time for introspection. And it is time for Britain to consider what has gone wrong.

She says Britain has allowed extremism to go unchecked.

She says the pro-Palestine marches have become “carnivals of hatred directed at the Jewish homeland”.

She says the protests “asinine slogans”.

You hear it in ‘from the river to the sea’, as if the homes and the lives of millions of Jewish people should be erased.

You hear it in ‘globalise the intifada’, which means nothing at all if it doesn’t mean targeting Jewish people for violence.

We have tolerated this in our country for too long …

We must now draw a line and say that in Britain you can think what you like, and within the bounds of the law you can say what you like, but you have no right to turn our streets into the theatres of intimidation, and we will not let you do so anymore.

Syed says he thinks it is a risk for the Tories to spend too much time condemning the Labour party for its failures. People are not listening.

And he is using the line about contrition. (See 2.44pm.)

What that public wishes for is contrition, a certain type of penitence, a genuine sense that the Tory party understands the scale of its own failures. Then, I believe, the British public will win again.

He says, just as Margaret Thatcher turned the country around after it moved too far to the left, he thinks Kemi Badenoch could do the same thing again. He urges the Tories not to chase short-term polls, and to “play the long game”.

He ends saying it is “not impossible, in fact … likely” that the Tories could win the next election.

(It is a good speech, which gets a decent reception, although if Syed thinks the Tories need to show “penitance” and stop condemning Labour for everything, then it is hard to understand why he places so much faith in Badenoch.)

Peter Walker has listening to James Cleverly at a fringe event where the shadow housing secretary, and former home secretary and former foreign secretary, said the party must retain the “broadest appeal”. Peter says there seemed to be a coded message for Kemi Badenoch.

At a Tory fringe event, James Cleverly has given a long and passionate defence of his party being a broad church, and not one defined by a narrow doctrine. While he says he supports leaving the ECHR, this does feel like a coded rebuff to the current Badenoch doctrine.

And here is the Cleverly quote.

Ben Quinn is a senior Guardian reporter.

The organisers of mass protests calling for the ban to be lifted on Palestine Action have sad they will undertake a “major escalation” in response to the home secretary’s announcement of plans to crack down on protests

Shabana Mahmood’s announcement that police are to get new powers to target repeated protests, aimed particularly at cracking down on demonstrations connected to Gaza (see 8.15am), was described as an “extraordinary new affront to democracy” by Defend Our Juries.

The group said in a statement today that it will escalate its campaign to lift the proscription of Palestine Action ahead of the legal challenge against the ban being heard in the high court. A judicial review hearing will take place over three days from 25-27 November.

Defend Our Juries said there would be mass civil disobedience defying the ban across Britain over days from 18 November to 28 November, both in the lead up to and throughout the judicial review.

A new pledge form is being launched today by Defend Our Juries, which asks its supporters to “book time off now, and sign the form to tell us where you’ll be taking action”, adding that there will be civil disobedience “in key cities and towns” across Britain.

The form requires pledge takers to commit to taking part in the actions they sign up to, and to confirm they “understand that participating in this campaign comes with risks, a chance of arrest and other legal consequences”.

A spokesperson said:

It beggars belief that the government has responded to widespread condemnation of its unprecedented attack on the right to protest — from the United Nations, Amnesty International, legal experts and even the former director of public prosecutions — by announcing a further crackdown on free speech and assembly in our country.

The move comes after the total number of arrests at protests – where people have been detained after holding placards saying ‘I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action” - reached 2,000. Almost 500 people were arrested in London on Saturday at a protest organised by Defend Our Juries.

The spokesperson added:

The home secretary’s extraordinary new affront to our democracy will only fuel the growing backlash to the ban.

Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, has said that it is “totally irresponsible” for the Conservative to propose withdrawing from the European convention on human rights because of the impact that would have on the peace process in Northern Ireland. He posted these on social media.

1. When the Northern Ireland Bill to implement the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was debated in the House of Commons on 20 July 1998, the then Conservative opposition gave it its full support. The GFA has resulted in over 27 years of peace after the trauma of the Troubles

2. And yet the Conservative party has now joined Reform in advocating a policy that could undermine the Good Friday Agreement - namely by proposing to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights.

3. Until recently, it was completely unthinkable that a party aspiring to govern the United Kingdom would countenance putting that Agreement at risk, given that ECHR membership is one of the GFA’s founding pillars.

4. Or that they would seek to put the UK in the same group as Belarus and Russia as the only three countries in Europe which would not be signatories to the Convention. Utterly irresponsible.

Lord Wolfson argues that, legally, the UK could leave the ECHR without undermining the Good Friday agreement. His briefing paper relies on some of the arguments in a recent report from the Policy Exchange thinktank making this argument.

But critics say the political objections to ECHR withdrawal from supporters of the Good Friday agreement would be as strong or stronger than the legal arguments. In his report Wolfson seems to accept this, saying “the political arguments [relating to ECHR withdrawal and Northern Ireland] at play are complex, and are beyond the scope of this legal advice”.

The Conservative party has just published the 185-page report from Lord Wolfson KC, the shadow attorney general, on the case for leaving the European convention on human rights. Wolfson says the ECHR limits the freedom of the UK government to act in five areas where Kemi Badenoch set tests for staying in, and he argues that leaving is feasible. An extract was leaked last week.

In her interview with Laura Kuenssberg, Kemi Badenoch defended her decision to take her time as Tory leader developing policy. But she admitted that there may have been a “a small political price to pay in the polls” as a result.

When it was put to her that this had left her party floundering in the polls, she replied:

It will pay off. Nothing good comes quickly or fast. It will pay off. I’m an engineer and the way that I was taught to do things is you have a plan, you work it through.

It’s not about being the first to announce a policy. It’s about having the best policy. That is what I’m offering.

And, yes, there may have been a small political price to pay in the polls. It will pay off eventually.

What we cannot have is more and more of the same failed politics of people just rushing out, not knowing what they’re doing, saying whatever whatever, and then making a mess of people’s lives.

In an interview with Times Radio, Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, claimed there were “dark forces running amok” in the country. Referring to the rise in antisemitism, she said:

We have a broader problem of a rise not only in antisemitism but in other forms of hatred as well.

There are clearly malign and dark forces running amok across our country.

It’s a challenge for governments of all stripes to work out how to deal with these issues without placing more pressure, and frankly more unwanted burden and responsibility, on minority communities.

Laura Kuenssberg tried pretty hard to get an answer from Kemi Badenoch about where the 150,000 illegal migrants she wants to deport every year will go, but did not get very far. For the record, here is the exchange in full.

LK: You are promising you would remove 150,000 people who don’t have permission to be here every year. That’s the population of a city like Cambridge or a place like Blackpool. It’s a lot of people. You’d leave the European convention on human rights in order to make it easier. Where on earth would they all go?

KB: The fact is there are too many people in our country who should not be here. That is why today I’m going to be talking about that borders plan you just outlined …

People need to go back to their countries. They can go to safe third countries if that’s the best thing for them. We had a Rwanda plan, we had a deterrent, that was already working in terms of deterring people before it had even come into place.

LK: The evidence on that is disputed.

KB: I’m sure people will dispute it, but the point is Labour scrapped it, they had no plan, they said they were going to smash the gangs and crossings have increased about 40%.

LK: So where would you propose that 150,000 people would go? Because the original Rwanda plan was going to take perhaps 1,000 people over five years. Where would those people all go?

KB: Not here, not here. They do not belong here. They are committing crimes. They are hurting people. We have been trying to deport so many people and have been facing obstacles in the legal system. That’s why we’re leaving the ECHR.

We tried to deport a Jamaican national who had committed crimes. Shabana Mahmood and Keir Starmer wrote a letter asking us not to deport him. He went on to kill someone else later.

I’m tired of us asking asking all of these irrelevant questions about where should they go? They will go back to where they should do or another country, but they should not be here.

I’m tired of us asking all of these irrelevant questions about where should they go. They will go back to where they should do, or another country, but they should not be here. We need to look after the people in our country. It’s not fair.

LK: It’s not irrelevant to say where would they go.

KB: The most relevant question is, should they be here? If they should not be here, then they need to be removed.

The logically conclusion of what you’re saying is that, let’s just give up, it’s just all too difficult. This is how we’ve got to this mess. We cannot have this attitude anymore. That is why we have come up with a credible plan.

LK: Tell us credibly where they will go.

KB: I’ve answered that question. They will go back to where they came from. That’s what they need to do.

We cannot have a situation where we can’t deport people and say, well we don’t know where they go, so they can just stay here. That is basically inviting every single person across the world to our shores because we don’t know where they would go afterwards. This is a fatalistic and defeatist attitude and I will not have that …

LK: You say you have a credible plan. Tell us credibly how you are going to get 150,000 people every year to leave this country and go back to countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea.

KB: They have come from all over the world. Voluntary returns do happen, but that is why we’re having the removals force. We’ll be standing up a force that does not exist right now …

When I was in Epping talking to the families of children who have been hurt, one of them sexually assaulted, they are not interested in these sorts of questions. They want to know why government is failing them.

It is not fair on people in our communities across the country to pay the price for this. It was not fair for all of those girls who had foreigners raping them in the grooming gangs to still be living in the community with their victims. That is not right.

In one respect, Badenoch’s failure to be able to answer a straightforward question about a flagship policy is a colossal weakness – especially given that she is trying to make the point that her plans to deal with immigration are “serious”, unlike Reform UK’s.

But perhaps she does not think it will matter. As Donald Trump has established, some voters respond better to outrage than to competence. They like a tear-up-the-rules authoritarian who is contemptous of journalists asking technical questions and who just wants to get things done. This is a role Badenoch performs well; having rows with journalists is something she seems to enjoy.

But, if this is the plan, it does not fit well with the strategy that Badenoch set out when she was elected last year. At that point she declared she wanted to wait two years before announcing policy, because she wanted to work on it properly, and she implied that it did not matter if the Tories kept a low profile for a bit because, after the election defeat, people would not be listening to them anyway.

Also, there is already an ‘outrage, not competence’ UK politician in the field. It is Nigel Farage. Labour recently put out a press release with six examples of Farage or his party giving “don’t know” answers to questions. They even set up a spoof website about Reform’s don’t know manifesto. But it does not seem to have dented Reform’s opinion poll lead.

Kemi Badenoch claimed that the last government’s plan to sent asylum seekers arriving on small boats to Rwanda was already working as a deterrent before it was abandoned by Labour.

The last government legislated for the Rwanda plan, but it never properly implemented. There were no flights carrying people to Rwanda because they were being deported under its provisions. Only four people went voluntarily, accepting a payment to relocate.

But Badenoch told Laura Kuenssberg this morning:

People need to go back to their countries. They can go to safe third countries if that’s the best thing for them. We had a Rwanda plan, we had a deterrent, that was already working in terms of deterring people before it had even come into place.

Badenoch did not offer any evidence to back up this claim. But she may have been referring to anecdotal evidence from France where, before the election, some asylum seekers told reporters they were postponing travel until after the election because they knew Labour would scrap the Rwanda scheme.

The Labour party has issued this response to Kemi Badenoch’s interview with Laura Kuenssberg. (See 9.48am.) A Labour spokesperson said:

Kemi Badenoch has been Conservative leader for 338 days now and the British people are still waiting for an apology for the mistakes her party made. Her Conservative party has learned absolutely nothing from 14 years of failure.

Badenoch can’t answer the most basic questions about the policies she’s supposedly spent months thinking about. It’s the same old Tory party making the same old mistakes – and the public shouldn’t and won’t forgive them.

Q: Isn’t your borders plan just about signalling to Nigel Farage that, if Reform UK are the largest party, you will prop him up?

Badenoch does not accept that.

She claims Farage wants to spend “loads and loads of money on welfare”. She says the economy will be “on fire” if he gets into power.

She says the Tories are the only party with a credible plan.

And Reform UK are not experienced, she says.

Can you imagine what it would be like the people who’ve never been in government before? They’ll be learning all the job. they won’t be able to deliver, and our country will be in a much worse place.

Only the Conservative party can deliver both the competency and the bravery to deal with these tough decisions.

Q: In some polls the Tories are doing worse than the Liberal Democrats.

Badenoch says she has said time and time again “we have to hold our nerve” because the Tories will face tough times. It is going to be “very bumpy”. In the past opposition parties have been out of office for 14, 13 or 18 years. She want the Tories to be back in power in four.

Q: Are you saying you can be the next PM with the polling as it is now?

Badenoch replies:

Yes. And the polling will change.

She claims spending time developing “robust policies” will work.

Q: Robert Jenrick says people who do not back leaving the ECHR should be removed as candidates. Do you agree?

Badenoch says the party will not let people stand as candidates if they do not support ECHR withdrawal. They can be party members and not support the policy, but not election candidates.

UPDATE: Badenoch said:

If you do not agree with leaving the ECHR, then you should not and cannot stand as a Conservative candidate.

Asked whether she will “kick people out” if they rebel on this issue, she said:

They can be in the party, but they cannot stand as MPs.

We have lots of members who have lots of views, we don’t remove people for having slightly different views on policy.

But if you want to be a member of parliament as a Conservative, then you need to understand that leaving the ECHR is a manifesto commitment.

Q: You said you wanted the Tories to take time working on policy. But while you have been doing that, the party’s position has got worse.

Badenoch says polls are not elections.

She says Kuenssberg cannot know that, if plans had been announced earlier, they would be doing better.

She says she wants plans that would work.

She claims Labour is doing nothing because it did not have proper plans.

Q: But what if you are the problem?

Badenoch says she was elected to deliver for the party.

Q: If you do badly in the elections next year, will you resign?

Badenoch replies:

I’m the person who was elected to deliver exactly as I’m doing now. We’ve come out with new policies. We have shown that we’ve done the hard work. We’re not going to waste our time in opposition, but the fact of the matter is that we’re only party that can deliver with a stronger economy and stronger borders.

Badenoch defends her plan to scrap the Climate Change Act, claiming the UK is “the only country in the world” complying with Paris climate change agreement.

Badenoch is now being asked about her removals plan.

Asked where she would deport 150,000 a year to, Badenoch says “not here”.

They do not belong here. They are committing crimes. They are hurting people. We have been trying to deport so many people and have been facing obstacles in the legal system. That’s why we’re leaving the ECHR …

I’m tired of us asking asking all of these irrelevant questions about where should they go? They will go back to where they should do or another country, but they should not be here.

We need to look after the people in our country, but it’s irrelevant to say where would they go. It is not. The most relevant question is, should they be here?

If they should not be here, then they need to be removed.

She suggests, if people focus on these questions, they will not do anything.

The logical conclusion of what you’re saying is that, let’s just give up. It’s just all too difficult. This is how we’ve got to this mess. We cannot have this attitude anymore. That is why we have come up with a credible plan.

Laura Kuenssberg opens the interview with a clip of her interviewing Kemi Badenoch near the site of the Manchester synagogue attack.

In the studio, Kuenssberg asks if the Tories will support the plans announced by Shabana Mahmood this morning. Badenoch replies:

Of course, we will support them. But what took them so long?

And the issue, from my perspective, is, why should the public trust a home secretary who not that long ago, was protesting herself.

She claims Mahmood took part in a protest outside a supermarket stocking Israeli goods.

Q: You back freedom of speech. Would you support curbs on the right to protest.

I believe in free speech, but that has to be within the bounds of the law.

If people are using protest to intimidate, if they’re using protest to incite violence, then, no, it’s not protesting. It’s intimidation.

She repeats the claim about Mahmood protesting outside a supermarket.

She seems to be referring to this story from 11 years ago.

Q: The Sunday Times says the prosecution of two people for spying collapsed because the PM’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, attended a meeting where he said the government would not describe China as an enemy of the UK. Is that right?

Mahmood says no government minister was involved in that decision. The decision to drop the trial was entirely a matter for the Crown Prosecution Service.

Q: The report is not about a minister; it is about what the PM’s national security adviser said at a meeing.

Mahmood says:

I’m not aware of any such meeting taking place. It was a decision of the Crown Prosecution services …

I’m very disappointed that that prosecution has not proceeded.

Our understanding is that the evidence that was available to the Crown Prosecution Service when they brought the charges is not materially different to the evidence that they had just before the trial was due to get underway. So I think it’s a question for the prosecution service to answer.

Q: Is China an enemy of the UK?

Mahmood says China is a challenge to the UK.

Here is the Sunday Times story.

Q: Ministers urged people not to attend pro-Palestine marches this weekend. But they did. What more will you do?

Mahmood explains the plans announced this morning. (See 8.15am.)

Q: Are you able to say these plans are explicitly about banning the pro-Palestine protests?

Mahmood says:

This is not about a ban. This is about restrictions and conditions that will enable the police to maybe put further time restrictions [or] move those protests to other places.

The police already have powers on conditions and protests.

What I will make clear in the law is cumulative disruption is in and of itself a reason to place restrictions.

(Organisers would say that being told a march cannot take place where it has previously taken place would feel like a ban.)

Q: The Tories say they will deport 150,000 illegal immigrants a year and leave the European convention on human rights. Would you do that?

Mahmood says the government won’t do that. It has decided it is not necessary. ECHR membership underpins returns agreement.

She goes on:

The Tories have zero credibility in this area. They were in government for 14 years. They’ve suddenly discovered a zeal for reform that they did not have when they were in office, and they really do need to explain why with immigration enforcement which we already have in this country – they might not know about it about it because they barely availed themselves of it when they were in government.

Removals were down under the Conservative party. Removals of foreign offenders were down under the Conservative party. They’ve all gone up under the first year of the Labour government.

Mahmood says she has “no truck” with the argument that people should not be arrested for holding up signs saying they support Palestine Action (a proscribed group – which means just holding a sign in public saying you support them is an offence). She says:

I have no truck with this argument that suggests that merely holding up a placard somewhere in central London somehow shouldn’t have a police response.

If you’re supporting a proscribed organisation, you are breaking the law of our land.

That organisation has been prescribed. It is an offence to show support for that organisation.

People might not like that decision. They might have questions about the way that the anti-terror laws work in this country. But there is no excuse for holding up placards supporting a banned organisation. That will always be met with a police response.

Back to the Tories, and here are more details of the plan for an Ice-style removals force. The party has announced a borders policy, set out in a 15-page document (which does not seem to be available online yet).

There are seven elements to the plan, which the Tories have spelt out like this.

1) Ban asylum claims for illegal entrants

2) Out of the ECHR and ECAT, and repeal HRA

3) Removals Force established to remove 150,000 per year

4) Deport all new illegal arrivals within a week, and all foreign criminals

5) End the Immigration Tribunal, Judicial Review and legal aid for immigration cases

6) Returns agreements backed by visa sanctions

7) Support our allies abroad to prevent illegal entry to Europe

(Sometimes it can be a good idea to use a mnemonic to help promote a policy, but this one seems over-contrived.)

And this is what the Conservative party document says about the removals force (point 3 of the plan).

We will create and fund an enhanced Removals Force modelled on the recent successful US approach (US ICE), with a goal to remove all illegal arrivals, all foreign criminals and those already here illegally, as well as to monitor illegal working. This will replace the current Immigration Enforcement entity in the Home Office, with a relentless focus on removing those with no right to be here.

Removals Force will have double the budget of current Immigration Enforcement (costing an extra £820m a year, or £1.6bn in total). This will be funded from closing the asylum hotels and the wider costs of our out-of-control asylum system, which amount to £4.76bn a year.

This Removals Force will have sweeping new powers. For example, we will change the law to allow Removals Force to use facial recognition systems without warning signs to identify, detain and remove illegal immigrants. The police will be mandated to check all those they stop or arrest against biometric borders data and all those who are not here legally will then be deported by Removals Force. We would expect Removals Force to integrate closely with the police.

Priorities for removal will be:

1. New illegal arrivals – who should be removed within a week at most.

2. Foreign criminals.

3. Those who recently entered the country illegally and whose protection claims have not yet been processed.

4. Those whose humanitarian / asylum visas expire and are not renewed, including those previously granted asylum or other forms of protection who do not qualify under the new rules set out here.

5. Others identified or encountered who are here illegally, which will include visa over-stayers, failed asylum seekers and illegal entrants who remain in the UK without immigration status.

Removing the legal barriers, and doubling the resources available, should lead to a roughly five-fold increase in the number of removals from 34,000 to around 150,000 per year.

There used to be an informal convention in Westminster that, when the main opposition party was holding its annual conference, the government would hold off on major announcements. But, like many of the customs associated with the “good chaps” approach to politics, this has broken down and the Home Office has just announced a big story that will gobble up some, but not all, of the attention the Tories were expecting.

Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, is going to tighten the law to make it easier for the police to stop certain protests. They will be allowed to consider, not just the one-off impact of a planned protest, but the “cumulative impact” of regular marches organised to promote the same cause.

This is a response to the regular pro-Palestine marches that have been taking place since the Israel-Gaza war started two years ago, and in particular to the decision of organisers to go ahead with protests yesterday even after ministers suggested they should be called off out of respect to the Jewish community following the Manchester synagogue attack on Friday.

In a news release, the Home Office says:

Police forces will be granted new powers to put conditions on repeat protests as the home secretary orders a fresh look at how protests are policed and organised.

The new powers, which will be brought forward as soon as possible, will allow senior officers to consider the ‘cumulative impact’ of previous protest activity.

If a protest has taken place at the same site for weeks on end, and caused repeated disorder, the police will have the authority to, for example, instruct organisers to hold the event somewhere else. Anyone who breaches the conditions will risk arrest and prosecution.

The home secretary will also review existing legislation to ensure that powers are sufficient and being consistently applied. This will include powers to ban protests outright, and will also include provisions in the crime and policing bill, which is currently going through parliament.

Allowing police forces to take into account “cumulative impact” when deciding whether to ban a march is one of the proposals in a report published last year by John Woodcock (Lord Walney), the former Labour MP who was appointed by the last government as its independent adviser on political violence and disruption. Woodcock’s proposals were condemned by human rights groups, and many of his recommendations were ignored by the Tories.

Commenting on her announcement, Mahmood said:

The right to protest is a fundamental freedom in our country. However, this freedom must be balanced with the freedom of their neighbours to live their lives without fear.

Large, repeated protests can leave sections of our country, particularly religious communities, feeling unsafe, intimidated and scared to leave their homes. This has been particularly evident in relation to the considerable fear within the Jewish community, which has been expressed to me on many occasions in these recent difficult days.

These changes mark an important step in ensuring we protect the right to protest while ensuring all feel safe in this country.

UPDATE: Here is Peter Walker’s story on this.

Related: Police to get new powers to crack down on repeated protests, says Home Office

Good morning. The Conservative party conference is starting in Manchester today – although you could be forgiven for thinking it’s another Reform UK conference, because Kemi Badenoch has already made two huge policy commitments that are straight out of the Nigel Farage manual.

First, on Friday night, she announced that the Tories would withdraw from the European convention on human rights.

Related: Conservatives would take UK out of ECHR, Badenoch confirms

And, last night, she said that if her party wins the election it will set up a new immigration taskforce, modelled on Donald Trump’s beefed-up Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), with the intention that it will deport 150,000 people who are in the UK illegally every year.

Related: Tories to pledge to create immigration taskforce modelled on Trump’s Ice

Given the way Ice is now operating in the US – like an autonomous militia, with masked goons violently abducting migrants, or anyone who looks like one, with little or no regard to due process – Guardian readers, and other progressives, may assume that this is about the worst idea imaginable. But this is where concerns about illegal immigration are pushing the policy debate for rightwing parties (Reform propose something similar, only they have not fleshed it out in so much detail), and Badenoch herself thinks this will prove popular.

In an interview with Ben Riley-Smith for the Telegraph, she was asked if the plan for an Ice-style removals force was a bit Trumpian. Badenoch replied:

I wouldn’t be surprised if he [Trump] loved it.

But what’s really important is that people in this country will like it.

Within the next few days we might find out.

Here is the agenda for the day.

8.30am: Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, is interviewed on Sky’s Sunday with Trevor Phillips.

9am: Kemi Badenoch is interviewed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

9.30am: Badenoch is interviewed by Camilla Tominey on GB News.

1.30pm: James Cleverly, the shadow housing secretary and former home secretary and former foreign secretary, takes part in a Q&A at a Tony Blair Institute fringe.

2pm: The conference opens. The speakers include Kevin Hollinrake, the Conservative chair, Matthew Syed, the Sunday Times columnist who recently revealed that he has joined the Tories (having in the past tried to get elected to parliament as a Labour candidate), Russell Findlay, the Scottish Tory leader, and Darren Millar, the Welsh Tory leader.

2.45pm: Kemi Badenoch, the party leader, gives a speech that is expected to focus on the party’s plans to leave the European convention on human rights. Her main speech is on Wednesday.

3.15pm: Members hold a debate on the proposition that “freedom of speech is a fundamental pillar of democracy, and we need to create stronger protections for it in law”.

3.30pm: Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, takes part in a Q&A with Robert Colvile, the Centre for Policy Studies director, at a fringe meeting.

5.15pm: Philp speaks at a fringe meeting on policing.

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