Trade policy: 20 people to meet at Tory conference

LONDON — This year’s Conservative Party conference might be a bit gloomier than the gatherings of recent years. After 14 years in power, it’s time for the Tories to take a backseat and reckon with what went wrong — and why July’s general election saw them hemorrhage so many seats. 

There’s also the big question of who the next party leader will be. Those in the race are sure to make their voices heard. Keep an ear out for their pitches.

The halls of Birmingham’s International Convention Centre will be filled with familiar faces, as well as a few bleary-eyed advocacy groups and think tankers still lingering from the Labour conference.

To help you sift through the swarm, we’ve curated a lineup of the top trade players heading to this year’s conference.

The rulemakers

Kemi Badenoch

As one of the four remaining contenders in the Tory leadership race, all eyes will be on Kemi Badenoch in Manchester. Of course, she is better known to trade wonks for her time at the helm of the Department for Business and Trade, and its previous incarnation, the Department for International Trade.

The former trade secretary’s achievements include progressing free-trade agreement negotiations with India, the Gulf Cooperation Council and bringing Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership talks to fruition. She was less successful with Canada. Outside of her party, her outspokeness on issues such as race, transgender identity and net zero, as well as her readiness to shoot down her critics, have earned her a reputation as a divisive figure in British politics.

David Frost

David Frost can credibly claim to be the man who got Brexit done. As Boris Johnson’s chief negotiator, he was partly responsible for doing what others could not and getting a deal — and Britain’s departure — over the line in Brussels.

Once regarded as a low-key shunner of the limelight and enigmatic backroom man, since leaving government Frost has used his regular newspaper columns and media interventions to build an outsize political presence for himself in Conservative circles. 

Now one of the House of Lords’ most prominent peers, he regularly opines on trade issues — usually in the course of defending the Brexit deal he negotiated for the country. He’s widely read in Tory circles and a reliable signpost of grassroots Conservative thought when it comes to trade and Brexit issues. Some suspect he may also fancy a return to frontline politics. 

Nick Timothy

Nick Timothy’s tenure as Theresa May’s chief of staff is usually remembered for two reasons: his role in, and sacking after, the Tories’ disastrous 2017 election result, and his large, Rasputin-like beard. He’s since trimmed the beard and has just been elected as MP for West Suffolk.

Regarded in Tory circles as a rising star, Timothy is unlikely to stay on the backbenches for long. And he’s not shy about his views on trade: in April, he co-authored a report with the Conservative think tank Onward arguing that “industrial decline and a lack of national savings have left Britain overly reliant on imports and foreign capital.” His priority, he says, is reindustrializing Britain.

He’s also long been a hawk on China and reckons the U.K.’s economic dependence on the country has bought its silence on human rights abuses.

 Tom Tugendhat

Alongside Badenoch, another contender for the party’s leadership is China hawk Tom Tugendhat. A security minister in the last government, Tugendhat has been described as the “British MP China hates most.” He has been sanctioned by Beijing and has called for the superpower to be formally designated a threat to national security — making him a threat to Labour if it pursues a soft-on-China trade policy.

A fluent Arabic speaker, Tugendhat served in the U.K.’s armed forces with his successor, the current Security Minister Dan Jarvis, who remains a close friend. The former soldier is presenting himself as a fresh face in the leadership contest despite serving in the previous government, and polling ranks him as the most well-liked candidate among the public.

Kevin Hollinrake

As a former DBT minister, Kevin Hollinrake is well known in trade circles. He briefly mulled a leadership run of his own, but ultimately lent his support to former boss Kemi Badenoch. He is now getting stuck into his role as the Tory trade supremo, but how long this lasts will depend on how Badenoch fares.

Hollinrake is no stranger to the needs of businesses having worked for insurer Prudential before co-founding the estate agency Hunters and a series of startups, with most of his career spent in the property sector.

Liz Truss 

Love her or hate her, Liz Truss is a name that Tory Conference-goers won’t forget anytime soon. Many will know her for her ill-fated 49-day stint as prime minister. But to trade wonks, Truss is also remembered for her time as trade secretary under Boris Johnson.

During this time, she waved the flag for the newly-established post-Brexit Britain, spearheading the Trade Act in 2021, and touting the CPTPP trade deal as a major economic opportunity for the U.K. — though her efforts only deepened tensions with the EU. She also played a key role in Northern Ireland protocol negotiations, and helped to shape the U.K.’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Alicia Kearns

Alicia Kearns defines herself as a “one nation” Tory, but is best known as one of parliament’s fiercest China hawks. She may no longer be chairing the foreign affair committee, but she remains a regular commentator on trade issues and is ramping up her campaign to keep Uyghur forced labor from Xinjiang out of U.K. solar supply chains — including a project being built in her constituency. Expect her to continue pressing the Labour government to root out slave labor from the U.K.’s imports.

Daniel Hannan

As a Conservative MEP, Daniel Hannan for years cut a lonely figure in Strasbourg, arguing that Britain’s interests were best served outside the EU customs union. These days, he’s on a victory lap. 

One of the British right’s loudest voices on trade policy, his regular newspaper columns are widely read and more often than not touch on Britain’s trading relationship with its neighbors — whether to decry “Brussels style statism” or claim Britain has “the whip hand” over the EU in negotiations.

Now in the House of Lords, even without a frontbench job Hannan is a useful window into the thoughts of many eurokceptic Conservatives.

Dominic Johnson 

Former Investment Minister Dominic Johnson isn’t one to play it safe. He’s known for his relentless energy, described by Lord Mayor of London Michael Mainelli as “a great salesman” with the drive of “a wind-up toy with 4,000 watts.”

During his time as minister, he went against the status quo, strengthening investment ties with the Gulf Cooperation Council, even as reports surfaced that Saudi forces were targeting opponents of the futuristic NEOM city project. He signaled that trade talks with India shouldn’t be bogged down by concerns over their asks for professional visas and broke rank with many of his fellow Tories over the potential sale of the Telegraph to the UAE, dismissing critics as “sentimental” about the U.K.’s “so-called treasured assets.”

Johnson’s still a Tory peer, so he’s sure to be involved in party politics. He was recently spotted at Kemi Badenoch’s leadership launch, describing her as the “best boss [he] ever had.”

The influencers

Robert Colville

Robert Colville guards the flame of Thatcherism as director of the Centre for Policy Studies — the think-tank set up by the former prime minister to advance her agenda in the 1970s.

An expert member of the government’s Strategic Trade Advisory Group from 2020 until it was replaced in 2023, he has no trouble getting Conservatives to listen to him. In fact, in 2019 he was drafted in to write the Tory manifesto that won the party its biggest majority since Thatcher herself was in charge.

Colville has called for the Tories to make a sober assessment of what went wrong in July’s election, and, if necessary, “fundamentally re-think their offering.”

Alan Mendoza

If you haven’t met Alan Mendoza before, chances are you’ve seen him on TV, heard him over the airwaves, or read his opinions in the right-leaning press.

As co-founder and executive director of the trans-Atlantic foreign policy and national security think tank, the Henry Jackson Society, his job is to promote the society’s mission of spreading democracy and liberal values globally. These days, the think tank is primarily concerned with supporting democracy in the face of threats from China and Russia.

Zoë Billingham

The Labour-aligned IPPR North director, Zoë Billingham, will be pitching Tories on supporting the think tank’s progressive ideas to strengthen England’s regions. It may be an uphill battle, but Billingham has experience trying to sway Conservatives over to her view, having served as Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s economic policy adviser during the coalition government before becoming a civil servant in the Treasury.

Ben Ramanauskas

Former adviser to Liz Truss when she was trade secretary, Ben Ramanauskas, now a research fellow in economics at the University of Oxford, will be stalking the halls of Birmingham’s International Convention Centre at Tory party conference pitching attendees on the best way to grow Britain’s trade and hold Labour to account. Ramanauskas served as a Truss adviser for nearly a year and a half from early 2020 to September 2021, but doesn’t consider himself to be ideologically aligned with the former prime minister these days.

Bronwen Maddox

Maddox and her colleague Olivia O’Sullivan have been making waves in the world of trade for years. Maddox is now chief executive of Chatham House, the respected London-based foreign policy institute, after a tenure at the Whitehall-focused Institute for Government, and is an authority on the geopolitical aspects of trade.

Meanwhile O’Sullivan, armed with ten years of international development and foreign policy expertise from her Whitehall days, heads up its UK in the World Programme, exploring a post-Brexit U.K. At conference, she’ll be unpacking how a Tory government’s approach to trade policy would differ from a Labour government’s with Shadow Trade Secretary Kevin Hollinrake.

Voices of industry

Rain Newton-Smith

Leading the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), chief executive Rain Newton-Smith represents the organization’s 170,000 business members. Appointed in April 2024 to rehabilitate the CBI’s image a month after its sexual misconduct scandal, she’d originally planned to take up a role at Barclay’s as managing director, responsible for strategy and policy, sustainability and ESG. She’d been working at CBI for almost a decade as its Chief Economist, but the opportunity presented itself and she was warmly welcomed by former CBI president Mike Rake.

In her first year back, Newton-Smith has been a fierce advocate for greening the U.K. economy, calling on ministers to prioritize net zero, establish an Office for Net Zero Delivery, and introduce tax cuts to boost green tech investments.

Tom Bradshaw

Previous National Farmers’ Union (NFU) president Minette Batters was a tough act to follow, but Tom Bradshaw has already made a promising start since his election in February. Six months in and one general election later, he’s already bending ministers’ collective ears on urgent topics ranging from Brexit border controls, measures to tackle the bluetongue virus and plans for a veterinary agreement with the European Union. He’ll be joined at Conservative conference by NFU deputy president  David Exwood.

Stephen Phipson

Make UK’s chief executive Stephen Phipson, who describes himself as a “very personable and friendly guy,” has helmed the top manufacturing lobby group since 2017. He’s got a keen interest in the U.K.’s defense manufacturing after previously serving as a top civil servant on security exports and was a proponent of the previous Conservative government’s net zero ambitions. Phipson has previously warned that if the U.K. isn’t looking forwards on net zero, “we are simply going backwards.” He’ll be making the case for the Tories to stay on the path to cutting carbon — especially where it means cheaper energy for Britain’s manufacturers.

Shevaun Haviland

Haviland joined the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) in 2021 after serving as head of business relations in No. 10 and the Cabinet Office. Under her leadership, the BCC has been banging the drum for closer alignment with the EU in several reports that have pushed for deals on veterinary standards and the mutual recognition of professional qualification. She faces the arduous task of encouraging the Tories to back these moves if they’re taken up by the Labour government, despite their anti-Brexit connotations.

Nicola Watkinson

Watkinson leads TheCityUK’s international team, where she’s lobbied on various issues that affect the U.K.’s financial and professional services industry.

Prior to joining, she worked in the Australian Trade and Investment Commission as general manager for the Americas, as well as a deputy consul general in New York. That experience has served her well on her diplomatic trips to the U.S., including recent trips to Miami and Houston, to build on the U.K.’s state-level agreements. Lately, she’s raised concerns about the extra-territorial effects of the Biden administration’s investment screening proposals on U.K. funds, while also advocating for services to be given pride of place in post-Brexit free-trade agreements with the likes of Turkey.

Richard Ballantyne

2024 has been something of an annus horribilis for Britain’s ports. After splashing out £100 million on high spec inspection facilities in time for the rollout of Brexit border checks on EU imports this year, ports are now worried they could be left out of pocket. The fact is, that after extensive delays, some of these facilities are hardly being used and port executives blame the former Conservative government for this. Expect some awkward conversations between Ballantyne, chief executive of the British Ports Association, and former ministers.