The Conservative Party's Wake

Labour didn't have a great conference. Following a supposed triumph, the mood was hardly upbeat confident. It was best typified by Keir Starmer's speech, which will only be remembered for an unfortunate misspeaking incident. Still, it was much better than the Conservative conference. Labour were subdued, but the Tories attended a catastrophe.

A quick reminder about what happened in July. The collapse of the Tory position, long forecast round these parts and explored in a certain book (as seen on TV), served up the worst Conservative general election defeat ever. And, even worse, despite Labour's best efforts to make themselves as equally loathsome, it's not obvious how the Tories can make a come back. And that's without the long-term decline of the party being taken into account.

There were two reasonable moments at the conference, and both of them came from the mouth of James Cleverly. He began his stump speech with an apology to the country (albeit not for the crimes committed on their watch), and stood out from the rest of the pack as he pleaded with his party. "Let's be more normal", he said. These were words few, if any of his fellow Tories were interested in heeding.

The two front runners, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick were competing as if the chair of the Federation of Conservative Students was in contention. Jenrick put massive distance between his origin as a soggy Dave/Osborne era briefcase and his latter day manifestation of right wing bat shittery. Before Iranian missile strikes took out Israeli military targets and an oil platform, Jenrick had cringingly paraded around with a 'Hamas are terrorists' hoodie and pledged that the Star of David should be prominently displayed at every point of entry into this country. He would also, following Donald Trump, move the British embassy to East Jerusalem and, for good measure, vote for him if he was able to because "he's a conservative". Not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And it got worse. On Monday night, he accused the SAS of carrying out extra-judicial killings. He did this not to criticise the special forces, but to put across how the European Convention and its protections makes it harder for them to take terrorists into custody. A point that drew criticism from his edgingly less right wing rival, Tom Tugendhat. To top things off, he proposed a dukedom for noted anti-black racist, David Starkey. Tory MP Jesse Norman summed Jenrick's pitch up best: "lazy, mendacious, simplistic tripe".

Kemi Badenoch lived up to her 'Bad Enoch' billing and managed to be somehow worse. Having warmed the cockles of far right hearts over the summer, she went straight into conference with an Telegraph opinion piece arguing "not all cultures are valid". You don't need mega enhanced reading-between-the-lines skills to know what she was getting at. She gave a very tetchy defence of the position on Laura Kuenssberg, demonstrating an inability to cope with the mildest line of questioning. So much for the hard woman bravado about "walking through fire." It didn't end there. Having argued in the morning that "our culture" means valuing women, that afternoon she singled out maternity pay as "excessive" and symptomatic of the "burden of regulation" on British business. She doubled down on this, suggesting the minimum wage is harming employers. More, give us more! Okay. She jokingly said 10% of civil servants should be banged up because of incompetence, leaking, etc. Ha ha. She rubbished migrant care workers, claimed - without a shred of evidence - that conservative-minded students were marked down at university, and we learned her leadership campaign has its (undeclared) base at the home of a wealthy Tory donor. Not that this stopped her criticising Starmer over his fondness for favours offered by Lord Alli.

Among the other conference highlights were the 'Breed for Britain' fringe (also addressed by Badenoch), a long and indulgent conversation between Tim Stanley and Liz Truss, where she was feted like a rock star. Trump endorsement, check. I was right, check. Clash of civilisations, check. Tories lost because they're too woke, check. If the party was serious about clawing back the ground lost, Truss would be dealt a life time ban from conference. And, if this wasn't bad enough, most of the reports from Birmingham suggest the party members are in a chipper mood. Incredible.

Last year, it was obvious that the Tories could go one of two ways. Head right to consolidate their vote after a traumatic wipe out and see off Reform once and for all, or try something different. The answer, even from the "centrist" candidates is that the indulgence of extreme right wing politics and hobby horses is where they want to go. And that's fine. It might solidify their support on that side of the voting spectrum, but it won't make winning back dozens of Labour and Liberal Democrat-held seats any easier. Making the task more difficult if not impossible, it seems few Tories understand their party is on the verge of permanent irrelevance. This was less a conference, more a colourful noisy, unhinged and celebratory wake. And going by the politics offered by the contenders, they're competing not to lead the party but for the honour of lighting its cremation.