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Regional secretary with the National Education Union
A mixture of opportunism and strategy
JAMES MEADWAY sizes up Johnson’s speech to Tory Party conference
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is joined by his wife Carrie on stage after delivering his keynote speech at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester

THE Conservatives have wrapped up their annual conference in confident mood.

Well ahead in the polls and determinedly pushing ahead with a new-style Tory economics that shamelessly steals from the left, they are leaving a navel-gazing Labour Party adrift.

They are still the same party underneath the new clothes: Boris Johnson talked up high wages in the afternoon, but that morning his government pushed an estimated 4.4 million people further into poverty, snatching away the £20-a-week universal credit lifeline.

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