The coming of the autumn means it is party conference season.
MPs leave Westminster, with each of the parties descending on a city or town alongside their party faithful and the media for days of speeches, fringe events, networking and, quite often, drama.
These gatherings are ostensibly to hammer out policy, set the party’s agenda and present a united front to voters, but they don’t always go according to plan.
For prime ministers and party leaders, party conferences can often make or break their careers.
So ahead of this year’s gatherings, we take a look at some previous conference moments that have made headlines.
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Around 18 months into her premiership, Margaret Thatcher was facing a tough economic picture. Unemployment was rising, and there were rumblings within her own party about the direction the prime minister was taking.
Mrs Thatcher had begun changing the law around trade unions, and introduced the legislation to let people buy their own council homes. Privatisation had begun.
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The UK’s first female leader remained defiant, telling the assembled party faithful in Brighton: “To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say – you turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.”
Mrs Thatcher did indeed carry on with her economic plan, with unemployment beginning to fall after peaking at three million.
She would solidify her leadership with a victory in the Falklands War and went on to win two more elections, serving as PM until 1990.
Image: Margaret Thatcher speaking at the 1980 Conservative Party Conference
1981: David Steel tells Liberal activists to ‘go back to your constituencies and prepare for government’
Just a year after Mrs Thatcher told her party how she felt about changing tack, Liberal leader David Steel sought to inspire confidence in his activists.
The conference in Llandudno saw the party vote to adopt its alliance with the Social Democratic Party, endorsing a partnership that would precipitate the eventual creation of today’s Liberal Democrats.
Headwinds for the government and a strong by-election performance saw incredibly optimistic polling for the Liberals, and Mr Steel was clearly confident in his party’s chances.
It was on that note that he told those gathered on the shores of the Irish Sea: “Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government”.
The boost of the successful campaign in the Falklands and an economic swing from recession to growth buoyed the Conservatives in 1983 – with the SDP-Liberal Alliance winning only 23 seats in total.
It would be 29 years before any Liberal Democrat MPs were vindicated in preparing for government during a general election campaign, when they entered a coalition with the Tories in 2010.
Image: Liberal Leader David Steel (left)
1984: IRA bombing
A year after Mrs Thatcher’s landslide 1983 election victory, the Conservative Party conference in Brighton was marred by tragedy.
A month before the conference got under way, IRA member Patrick Magee booked into the hotel where the PM would be staying and planted a bomb with a long delay fuse under the bath in his room.
As the clocks swept past 2.30am on 12 October, Mrs Thatcher was in her room at The Grand Hotel, going over the speech she was set to give the next day.
At 2.54am, Magee’s bomb exploded, destroying a number of rooms and bringing down a chimney stack.
Mrs Thatcher and her husband, Denis, survived – as did all the members of the cabinet. But five others – including deputy chief whip Sir Anthony Berry – died.
The conference went ahead, with Mrs Thatcher telling delegates: “This government will not weaken. This nation will meet that challenge. Democracy will prevail.”
Magee was given eight life sentences in 1986, but was released under the Good Friday Agreement in 1999.
Image: The destroyed hotel in Brighton
1985: Neil Kinnock’s Militant Tendency speech
Six years and two election losses into Mrs Thatcher’s premiership, Labour was floundering in opposition.
Neil Kinnock was the man tasked with bringing the party back into government after the 1983 election wipeout under Michael Foot.
The goal he set himself at the Bournemouth gathering in 1985 was to make clear to the more radical parts of Labour that they were not welcome in his plans for the party.
The leader would have been hoping to avoid the embarrassment of 1983, when he fell over on a beach in Brighton.
He used his speech to a tempestuous conference to single out Liverpool City Council, which was controlled by members of the Militant faction of Labour.
The council had set an illegal budget which spent more than the local authority made, claiming that the central government under Mrs Thatcher should fill the shortfall. This was done to protest against the limits to the money the council could raise.
The financial difficulties this caused led to the council sending notice letters to 30,000 employees.
Criticising the left-wing of his party, Mr Kinnock said: “I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions.
“They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end up in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.”
These words were met with applause and cheers from most of the crowd, but some booed and walked out, including MP Eric Heffer. Derek Hatton, the deputy leader of Liverpool City Council, said Mr Kinnock’s words were “rantings and ravings”.
Image: Neil Kinnock in 1985
2003: IDS ‘turns up the volume’
Sir Iain Duncan Smith had been leader of the Conservative Party for two years when he stood up to deliver his speech in Blackpool, but he was facing rumblings of rebellion within his own ranks as MPs and members grew disheartened.
So he decided to go on the front foot.
The previous year, Sir Iain had told the audience his opponents should not underestimate “the determination of a quiet man”.
He played off this riff, stating that the “quiet man is here to stay, and he’s turning up the volume”. Sir Iain told his party that they “either want my mission, or you want Tony Blair – there is no third way”.
But after a poor set of local election results later in the year, Sir Iain lost a vote of no confidence of his MPs and was out as leader.
Image: Iain Duncan Smith at the 2003 Conservative Party Conference
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2005: Labour activist removed from hall for heckling foreign secretary
By 2005, the New Labour project was past its zenith. While Sir Tony Blair had won his third election, he had committed to not contesting a fourth.
The government was having to fight a rearguard action in the UK following the invasion of Iraq.
Opposition from within the party was coalescing around those who were also part of groups like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Stop The War Coalition.
It was not surprising, then, that disunity within Labour became one of the themes of the Brighton conference.
Jack Straw, then the foreign secretary, was giving a speech about the Iraq war. He told delegates that “we are in Iraq for one reason only – to help the elected Iraqi government build a secure, democratic and stable nation – and we can and will only remain with their consent.”
As he uttered the line, 82-year-old veteran Labour member Walter Wolfgang shouted “nonsense” – and according to some reports, “that’s a lie”.
As cameras panned towards the octogenarian – who had been a member of the party for more than 50 years – security could be seen manhandling Mr Wolfgang out of the conference hall.
He was later ejected from the conference as a whole, and when he tried to get back into summit he was held – but not arrested – using anti-terror laws.
The subsequent furore lead to a number of apologies, including from Sir Tony the next morning, and Mr Wolfgang being allowed to re-enter the conference the next day.
A founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Mr Wolfgang arrived in the UK just before the Second World War as his family fled the persecutions of Jews in Europe.
His treatment drew criticism from many parts of Labour, and he was greeted with a standing ovation when he returned to the conference hall.
Mr Wolfgang died in 2019.
Image: Walter Wolfgang was eventually allowed back into the conference
2007: George Osborne increases inheritance tax threshold
By now, Gordon Brown was prime minister. After years of tensions behind the scenes with Sir Tony, the latter had finally decided to stand aside. Mr Brown was elected unopposed as Labour Party leader, becoming PM in the process.
Having taken over in June, he was riding a wave of popularity heading into the conference. Mr Brown was judged to have deftly handled a foot and mouth outbreak, the run on Northern Rock, terrorist incidents and flooding.
In the midst of this honeymoon period, speculation grew about the possibility of Mr Brown seeking to capitalise on this and call an election to gain a mandate from voters.
Labour’s conference became dominated by the nascent vote, with people wondering when it would happen, not if.
There was no mention of an election in Mr Brown’s first conference speech as leader, meaning the speculation around a snap poll continued to rumble on as the Conservatives gathered for their conference in Blackpool.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne used his speech to announce a major policy shift that generated positive headlines, pledging to scrap inheritance tax for bequeathments under £1m.
A few days later, Mr Brown ended election speculation by confirming he would not go to the country. He denied being swayed by polling which suggested the Tories were ahead in marginal seats, while the Tories accused him of bottling it.
Image: Gordon Brown’s enemies took advantage of his ‘bottling’
2017: Theresa May’s disastrous speech
One prime minister who did call a snap election after taking over was Theresa May.
But Mrs May’s gamble backfired spectacularly – she lost her party’s majority and was forced to rely on the Democratic Unionist Party to pass legislation through a confidence and supply deal.
Mrs May managed to hang on to her job, although she needed a drama-free party conference to keep things on track as she tried to negotiate Brexit.
But things did not go according to plan during her speech.
First off, a persistent cough dogged her attempts at oratory; attendees were quick to rise to their feet in applause to give their leader a break. At one point, Chancellor Philip Hammond offered up a cough sweet. Mrs May also swigged water throughout.
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Watch Tory conference literally falling apart
Secondly, comedian Simon Brodkin interrupted Mrs May’s speech to hand her a P45 – the document someone gets when they leave a job. The mock document gave the reasons for Mrs May leaving office as “neither strong nor stable”, and “we’re a bit worried about Jezza”. Mr Brodkin joked that Boris Johnson had told him to do it.
The final disaster was with the backdrop of the speech. Letters behind Mrs May said: “Building a country that works for everyone”.
During the speech, the “f” fell off, with an “e” dropping later.
It was a disastrous affair all round, and emboldened the opposition to Mrs May within her own party.
The following year, Mrs May sought to head off similar conversations by dancing her way onto the stage, but her moves were labelled robotic and awkward by critics.
Image: Theresa May struggled through her speech in 2017
2021: Starmer heckled by Labour activists
Following the disruption of COVID in 2020, autumn 2021 marked Sir Keir Starmer’s first chance to address a Labour Party conference in person.
But as he was giving his speech, several people heckled him from the floor of the auditorium.
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Starmer heckled at Labour conference
One notable heckler was Carole Vincent, a former contestant on Big Brother. She could be seen shouting and pointing at Sir Keir.
In response, he said: “Shouting slogans or changing lives, conference?”, to a standing ovation.
Another audience contribution saw Sir Keir say he was used to being heckled by the Conservatives at PMQs on a Wednesday, but “it doesn’t bother me then, it doesn’t bother me now”.
Ms Vincent told Sky News her intervention was about “standing up in a principled manner against what he was saying, because he wasn’t saying ‘we are going to give a £15 minimum wage’.”
Image: Carole Vincent was one of the people who heckled Sir Keir Starmer
2022: Kwasi Kwarteng U-turns on cutting top rate of income tax
There were not many quiet days while Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng were in charge of the country – the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham was no different.
The pair went into October’s conference battling a potential collapse of the pensions sector as markets baulked at their mini-budget. The cornerstone of that fiscal plan was tax cuts funded by borrowing, which some classed as “unfunded”.
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Moment chancellor U-turns on tax rate
A lightning rod for those displeased with the mini-budget was a plan to abolish the top rate of income tax set at 45p in the pound for those making more than £150,000. It was seen as giving a tax cut to wealthier people at the expense of others.
As the conference started – just a week after the mini-budget – Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng were both staunchly defending the plans.
But there was open mutiny among Tory MPs. In the early hours of the second day of conference, it started to emerge that a U-turn was imminent – and the scrapping of the 45p tax rate was ditched later on that morning.
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Just hours later, Mr Kwarteng stood up to deliver his speech to conference, in which he had to defend the gutting of his mini-budget. He claimed the leadership had “listened” and therefore changed tack. Ms Truss said similar in her address.
The events at the conference marked the beginning of the end for the duo. Mr Kwarteng was sacked 11 days later, and Ms Truss announced she was following him out of Downing Street before October was out.
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The education secretary has said children with special needs will “always” have a legal right to additional support as she sought to quell a looming row over potential cuts.
The government is facing a potential repeat of the debacle over welfare reform due to suggestions it could scrap tailored plans for children and young people with special needs in the classroom.
Speaking in the Commons on Monday, Bridget Phillipson failed to rule out abolishing education, health and care plans (EHCPs) – legally-binding plans to ensure children and young people receive bespoke support in either mainstream or specialist schools.
Laura Trott, the shadow education secretary, said parents’ anxiety was “through the roof” following reports over the weekend that EHCPs could be scrapped.
She said parents “need and deserve answers” and asked: “Can she confirm that no parent or child will have their right to support reduced, replaced or removed as a result of her planned changes?”
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Sophy’s thought on whether to scrap EHCPs
Ms Phillipson said SEND provision was a “serious and complex area” and that the government’s plans would be set out in a white paper that would be published later in the year.
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“I would say to all parents of children with SEND, there is no responsibility I take more seriously than our responsibility to some of the most vulnerable children in our country,” she said.
“We will ensure, as a government, that children get better access to more support, strengthened support, with a much sharper focus on early intervention.”
ECHPs are drawn up by local councils and are available to children and young people aged up to 25 who need more support than is provided by the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) budget.
They identify educational, health and social needs and set out the additional support to meet those needs.
In total, there were 638,745 EHCPs in place in January 2025 – up 10.8% on the same point last year.
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One Labour MP said they were concerned the government risked making the “same mistakes” over ECHPs as it did with the row over welfare, when it was eventually forced into a humiliating climbdownin the face of opposition by Labour MPs.
“The political risk is much higher even than with welfare, and I’m worried it’s being driven by a need to save money which it shouldn’t be,” they told Sky News.
“Some colleagues are rebel ready.”
The MP said the government should be “charting a transition from where we are now to where we need to be”, adding: “That may well be a future without ECHPs, because there is mainstream capacity – but that cannot be a removal of current provision.”
Later in the debate, Ms Phillipson said children with special educational needs and disabilities would “always” have a “legal right” to additional support as she accused a Conservative MP of attempting to “scare” parents.
“The guiding principle of any reform to the SEND system that we will set out will be about better support for children, strengthened support for children and improved support for children, both inside and outside of special schools,” she said.
“Improved inclusivity in mainstream schools, more specialist provision in mainstream schools, and absolutely drawing on the expertise of the specialist sector in creating the places where we need them, there will always be a legal right … to the additional support… that children with SEND need.”
Her words were echoed by schools minister Catherine McKinnell, who also did not rule out changing ECHPs.
She told the Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge that the government was “focused on reforming the whole system”.
“Children and families have been left in a system where they’ve had to fight for their child’s education, and that has to change,” she said.
She added that EHCPs have not necessarily “fixed the situation” for some children – but for others it’s “really important”.
Victims will no longer have to “suffer in silence”, the government has said, as it pledges to ban non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) designed to silence staff who’ve suffered harassment or discrimination.
Accusers of Harvey Weinstein, the former film producer and convicted sex offender, are among many in recent years who had to breach such agreements in order to speak out.
Labour has suggested an extra section in the Employment Rights Bill that would void NDAs that are intended to stop employees going public about harassment or discrimination.
The government said this would allow victims to come forward about their situation rather than remain “stuck in unwanted situations, through fear or desperation”.
Image: Zelda Perkins, former assistant to Harvey Weinstein, led the calls for wrongful NDAs to be banned. Pic: Reuters
Zelda Perkins, Weinstein’s former assistant and founder of Can’t Buy My Silence UK, said the changes would mark a “huge milestone” in combatting the “abuse of power”.
She added: “This victory belongs to the people who broke their NDAs, who risked everything to speak the truth when they were told they couldn’t. Without their courage, none of this would be happening.”
Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said the government had “heard the calls from victims of harassment and discrimination” and was taking action to prevent people from having to “suffer in silence”.
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Weinstein found guilty of sex crime in retrial
An NDA is a broad term that describes any agreement that restricts what a signatory can say about something and was originally intended to protect commercially sensitive information.
Currently, a business can take an employee to court and seek compensation if they think a NDA has been broken – even if that person is a victim or witness of harassment or discrimination.
“Many high profile cases” have revealed NDAs are being manipulated to prevent people “speaking out about horrific experiences in the workplace”, the government said.
Announcing the amendments, employment minister Justin Madders said: “The misuse of NDAs to silence victims of harassment or discrimination is an appalling practice that this government has been determined to end.”
The bill is currently in the House of Lords, where it will be debated on 14 July, before going on to be discussed by MPs as well.