- 3 hours ago
- UK Politics
REUTERS
Theresa May will call for a "new approach" to politics where the government is a "force for good" as she closes the Conservative conference.
The PM will call on Tories to "embrace a new centre ground... built on the values of fairness and opportunity".
She will promise to use the power of government to help "ordinary working-class people".
The government should protect jobs and "repair" free markets when they do not work properly, she will say.
And she will promise working people will no longer be ignored by the "powerful and the privileged".
She will also attack pundits and MPs who find patriotism "distasteful" and who call immigration fears "parochial".
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BBC political correspondent Carole Walker said Mrs May will be returning to her core theme of the need to tackle unfairness and injustice in her speech.
While previous Tory leaders have sought to reduce state intervention, Mrs May will say her government will take action to identify injustice, find solutions and drive change.
The PM will say Labour does not have "a monopoly on compassion" and is set to criticise the party's "sanctimonious pretence of moral superiority".
"Let's make clear that they have given up the right to call themselves the party of the NHS, the party of the workers, the party of public servants," she will say, pointing to her party's plans for immigration, housing and workers' rights.
"I want to set our party and our country on the path towards the new centre ground of British politics - built on the values of fairness and opportunity - where everyone plays by the same rules and where every single person, regardless of their background or that of their parents, is given the chance to be all they want to be."
Making a pitch for the Tories to be the party of "ordinary working-class people", she will say: "Just listen to the way a lot of politicians and commentators talk about the public.
"They find their patriotism distasteful, their concerns about immigration parochial, their views about crime illiberal, their attachment to their job security inconvenient.
"They find the fact that more than 17m people voted to leave the European Union simply bewildering."
Dismissing the labels of the "socialist left and the libertarian right", she will tell Tory supporters: "It's time to remember the good that government can do.
"Time for a new approach that says while government does not have all the answers, government can and should be a force for good; that the state exists to provide what individual people, communities and markets cannot; and that we should employ the power of government for the good of the people.
Brexit questions
"Time to reject the ideological templates provided by the socialist left and the libertarian right and to embrace a new centre ground in which government steps up - and not back - to act on behalf of the people."
The closing speech in Birmingham is Mrs May's second conference address, after she spoke about Brexit on day one.
The UK's exit from the EU has loomed large over the four-day conference, which began with Mrs May confirming the timing of the UK's formal Brexit trigger, which will happen before March 2017.
On Tuesday she faced questions about the falling pound and reduced growth forecasts, promising to make the Brexit process as "smooth as possible", but acknowledging there would be "bumps in the road".
Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson will speak before the PM, saying First Minister Nicola Sturgeon "does not speak for Scotland" by raising the prospect of a second independence referendum in the wake of the Brexit vote.
Ms Davidson will tell Tory members that the majority of Scots want to "move on" from the debate about leaving the UK, and will urge them to dismiss the view that independence is now "inevitable".
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