Fresh off the back of his big conference speech yesterday, Rishi Sunak is keen to get on the front foot in defending his policy blitz. Speaking to Nick Robinson on the Today Programme, the PM insisted his radical, New Zealand-style smoking ban is the right call, and will be the “single biggest intervention in public health in a generation”. In other words, the biggest lurch towards the nanny state he could imagine:

 “Smoking is unequivocally the single biggest preventable cause of death, disability and illness in our society… there is no safe level of smoking… Everyone recognises this measure will be the single biggest intervention in public health in a generation.”

Labour are already making supportive noises, so this ban is almost inevitable whoever wins next year. A ban that will be the greatest triumph for nanny staters…

Sunak’s conference speech, introduced by his wife, contained some news, although no surprises. Guido gives you the main points…

• No tax cuts
• Bashed Starmer for “just banging on about Europe”.
• Rest of HS2 cancelled in favour of £36 billion worth of “Network North” projects.
• HS2 will go to Euston
• £2 bus fare cap in England will remain
• New Zealand-style smoking ban, so a 14 year-old today will never legally be allowed to buy a cigarette.
• On vapes, “looking at flavours, packaging, point-of-sale displays and disposable vapes”.
• Sunak “won’t be bullied into believing ‘people can be any sex they want to be”.
• Double student medics and also reform “workflows” of the NHS.
• No more “rip-off degrees” at universities.
• A-Levels scrapped, new “Advanced British Standard” to “bring together A-Levels and T-Levels into a new, single qualification”. which will see students studying maths and English till age 18.
• Teachers of “key subjects” to receive tax-free bonuses of up to £30,000 over the first five years of their career.

“It’s time for change…”

London Assembly chairman Andrew Boff is still banned from Tory Conference since his removal by police yesterday for heckling Braverman’s speech. While Suella tweeted following the scuffle that “he should be forgiven and let back into conference”, no one has contacted him about returning his pass. He will be watching Rishi’s speech on his laptop in the Wetherspoons outside the secure zone. This normally doesn’t even happen to Labour activists who turn up…

Conference security were clearly on high alert for Suella’s woke-bashing speech this afternoon. Almost the at the same second London Assembly chairman Andrew Boff heckled her comments on gender ideology, he was escorted out by officials. A tad heavy handed…

Boff has been a member of the London Assembly since 2008 and is a perennial runner-up in Tory London Mayoral nominations with strong socially liberal views. Sky’s Josh Gafson caught him getting escorted from Conference altogether by a policeman. Boff said Suella was talking “trans-phobic tosh” about gender ideology…

UPDATE Suella has issued a statement saying Andrew Boff should be let back into the conference.

Braverman’s speech was teased as pure “uncut Suella” and the Home Secretary warned of the migration “hurricane that is coming” as well as branding the Human Rights Act the “Criminal Rights Act”. Guido also believes Suella is the first cabinet minister to mention Susan Hall at Tory Conference…

She ended her speech, which was 13 minutes longer than Hunt’s yesterday, by calling the Tories “the trade union of the British people” and suggesting Shelley’s “Ye are the many, they are the few” as its motto. Echoing Tony Blair’s over-reaching claim that New Labour was “the political-wing of the British people”…