Business leaders, campaigners and politicians hit out at the Home Secretary Theresa May after she used her conference speech to announce a new crackdown on asylum and immigration. 
Critics claimed the woman who once gave the Tories the nickname was trying to bring back the “nasty party”. 
The SNP accused her of “dog whistling” to Ukip supporters, while the Institute of Directors complained she risked jeopardising the economic recovery with "irresponsible" rhetoric.
But there was applause within the conference hall, for a speech that was also widely seen as a Tory leadership bid. 
And Prime Minister David Cameron backed Mrs May’s claim that migration was damaging society. 
In an uncompromising speech, Mrs May unveiled a crackdown on immigration that included plans to kick out bogus refugees, return them when their home countries become safer and penalise those who travel through other European countries before claiming asylum in the UK. 
She received a round of applause as she told the hall "there is a limit to the amount of immigration any country can and should take".
She also insisted that it was impossible to manage all the consequences of large-scale immigration. 
“When immigration is too high, when the pace of change is too fast, it's impossible to build a cohesive society," she said. 
Wages are forced down and some people "forced out of work altogether" by mass migration, she added.
But she also pledged that money saved from helping those deemed less deserving could aid more refugees in conflict zones around the world.
David Cameron famously pledged to cut net migration to the UK to the tens of thousands.  
But Mrs May has consistently failed to meet that target.
The last available figures show that overall numbers increased by more than 300,000 in the year to March. 
The Home Secretary said Britain "does not need" such high levels, and the economic effect was "close to zero" at best.
She also hit back at critics of her crackdown on post-study visas, saying that she did not "care" about objections from universities. 
The Refugee Council described the proposals as “thoroughly chilling”.
Institute of Directors director general Simon Walker said he was "astonished" by the Home Secretary's "irresponsible rhetoric and pandering to anti-immigration sentiment".
He also suggested she was internal party politics ahead of the country, adding that "the myth of the job-stealing-immigrant" was nonsense.
John Cridland, of the CBI, said the government was penalising skilled workers who added too the economy.
Earlier, Mr Cameron said he agreed with Mrs May's comments, adding integrating new arrivals was "more difficult if you have excessive levels of migration".
Scottish Europe minister Humza Yousaf said: “Ms May’s speech was divisive, misleading and likely to inflame tensions between migrant and non-migrant communities, posing a risk to community cohesion."
Stuart McDonald, the SNP's immigration spokesman, said:“This may have been a speech to the Tory conference but Theresa May’s dog-whistle rhetoric was clearly designed to pander to a UKIP audience in the increasingly bitter battle to succeed David Cameron.
“It was about as inflammatory and divisive a speech a Home Secretary could make. Theresa May’s whole approach to her job is to pull up the drawbridge and put her fingers in her ears – deliberately conflating immigration with asylum and completely ignoring the evidence."
Former shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, the chair of Labour's refugee taskforce, said Mrs May "should be ashamed" of herself and called on David Cameron to disown the remarks.
She said: "In the middle of the biggest humanitarian refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War, when countries all need to work together to help, the Home Secretary chose to use her party conference speech to whip up fear and hostility about asylum seekers in Britain instead.
"David Cameron needs to urgently reject these unpleasant words from his Home Secretary - show Britain's compassion, remove refugees from the target, and agree that our country will do more to help."
However, campaign group Migration Watch UK hailed her speech as "thoroughly courageous".