A string of defections to Reform announced on the eve of the Tory conference, cameras panning over empty seats, hopeless poll results and somehow Kemi Badenoch still managed to sound upbeat. It was brave but a long way from convincing.
I can remember when tickets to the Conservative Party Conference were like gold dust, sought-after and fought-after. For years, I belonged to a thoroughly moribund organisation called the National Association of Conservative Graduates, solely in order to obtain a ticket for the conference.
The number of places allocated to us was based on the number of universities which had been in existence at the time of its formation!
Now comparatively few want to go, but despite the obvious low attendance, Badenoch claimed the conference was “teeming”.
As proof that it was full of enthusiasm rather than the misery of a wake, she said that she had been singing Sweet Caroline with some Young Conservatives in the small hours, as if there were something remarkable about young people staying up late.
In the past, the strategy was simple enough: say how ghastly Labour was, mock the Lib Dems and boast about all the wonderful policies the Tories would implement when they were in power.
Now the public already realises the first, Ed Davey does the second for them, and the third is seen as simply a catch-up exercise with Reform.
For 200 years, my old party fought the scourge of socialism. Its enemy has now changed - Ann Widdecombe
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Holding up as a flagship policy, leaving ECHR when Reform have been promising that forever just does not work. Delegates will dutifully clap and cheer, but the reaction of the voters will be: “What took you so long?”
Probably the most intelligent promise was to abolish business rates for high street shops and pubs because it appeals to what used to be the Tories’ core support: small businesses.
Yet Reform has already attracted many of them, and they may not be so ready to see-saw back again until they have seen how the ground lies.
The problem for the Tories is that the Opposition has changed. They are no longer fighting a party with an opposing political philosophy but one which shares much of their own, yet is demonstrably braver in saying what needs to be done and which appears resolute enough to do it.
Leave ECHR, reduce the size of the blob, ramp up deportations, take on the lefty lawyers. What Reform said yesterday, the Tory Party parrots today. Reform is the voice, and the Conservative Party the echo.
As I write this, it is being trailed in the press and media that the Conservatives are going to abolish the Sentencing Council because they want to eliminate two-tier justice, another echo of a claim long asserted by Reform and previously dismissed by the Tories.
Want to know what the Conservatives will be promising next year? I can tell you now. It will be whatever Reform has already said in the interim. The Brave New World of a revitalised Tory Party is not even on the horizon, and a lot of us would bet that the leader giving next year’s speech will not be the leader who gave this year’s.
I am no longer upset and angry at the mess that once great party has made of itself, merely resigned and reconciled to its self-inflicted oblivion. These days, it cannot even spell Britain, let alone run it.
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