Things can only get worse – for the Tories, that is

British politicians Iain Macleod, Peter Thorneycroft, Enoch Powell, Henry Brooke, Reginald Maudling, Quintin Hogg and Rab Butler, the Deputy Prime Minister, at the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool, UK, 10th October 1963
Tory jostling, 1963 style: That year’s Blackpool conference saw the birth pangs of modern leadership campaigns - Evening Standard, 1963

Early morning – clink, clink! – champagne bottles are delivered by Tugendhat supporters, all barely old enough to drink them. Tom’s winning the battle for T-shirts at the Tory conference in Birmingham.

After hearing that James Cleverly was holding a drinks party called “Bevs with Clevs”, I texted Team Tuggers to suggest they advertise “Dom with Tom”, as in Perignon. There was some confusion. His staff thought I was suggesting Tom put on high heels and spank the delegates. “Well,” I said, “it’s his best shot at winning.”

This is a party in need of a good smack. Some members think the election went well (“better than we feared”), others that Labour’s implosion guarantees a return to power “if we pick the right leader”.

In reality, Starmer’s poll numbers could hit historic lows and it would make no difference. His Commons majority is enormous. So long as the centre-Right is divided, he’ll keep it. The only issue that matters, the one question leadership contenders should be discussing, is how to heal the rift with Reform. Till that’s fixed, the attention given to this conference is pointless, and the hundreds of policemen patrolling it are redundant – except to protect journalists from Kemi Badenoch.

I thought Kemi was going to thump Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday-morning TV. Not “all cultures are equally valid”, she had written for The Telegraph. “Who do you mean?” asked Laura. “I know what you’re trying to do,” replied Kemi, “You want me to say Muslims, but I’m not going to do that” – although the eagle-eared noticed she had done that very thing.

Vote Kemi to keep the party in the headlines; Cleverly to reunite it; Tom to woo the Centre; Jenrick to woo the Right. The range of candidate pitches illustrates just how screwed the Tories are: they actually have to do all of the above, without being accused of contradiction.

Implicit within Kemi’s culture war rhetoric and Jenrick’s focus on immigration is an admission that minus Reform’s share of the vote, they can never re-enter office.

But Cleverly’s emphasis upon experience reflects the perception that they’ve chased populism over competence, while the preference of the media for Tom – you could hold a vote in the press lobby and he’d win by a landslide – is a reminder that they’ve shed as many wet votes as dry ones since Brexit. His activists wear “Tugend-hats”, and he addressed a rally atop a crate labelled the “Tugend-box”.

The spirit of Tom’s campaign recalls Quintin Hogg at the Blackpool Tory conference in 1963, the first modern Tory leader beauty pageant. Hogg handed out badges with a “Q” on them and was photographed feeding his baby in the foyer of the hotel, gimmicks with which we’re now very familiar.

At the time, delegates judged it vulgar. They preferred the urbane Alec Douglas-Home, who, in the opinion of Reggie Maudling, was everything they wanted to be: “A good athlete; not brilliant but intelligent, a man of charm, integrity and balance.”

Post-war Toryism was a club either for gentlemen or people who aspired to be gentlemen, and the loss of that patrician spirit is as damaging to the party’s fortunes as its U-turns on tax or borders. Just as Labour looks ridiculous claiming to be a working-class party while destroying industry and utilising personal shoppers, the Conservative claim to be the natural party of government – the guardian of the constitution – is absurd given its abdication of moral authority, its loss of duty and purpose.

The Tories crow at Labour’s donorgate crisis. Have they forgotten the Covid contracts? The No 10 parties? The sex scandals? Because the voters haven’t. The one solid perception they had of Rishi Sunak during the general election was that he’s an insanely rich man using politics to burnish his CV for a career in America – and this hasn’t gone away just because they now judge Starmer to be equally venal.

Polls suggest Labour has slipped, yes, but the Tories haven’t gained – for the brand is ruined. The best hope might not be to court Reform but amalgamate with it, to create a new party – a conservative alliance – united around a handful of core principles.

Beyond a true reckoning and reconstruction, what am I watching here in Brum but an audition to lose? Some say “the next Tory prime minister isn’t in parliament yet”. I suspect they are yet to be born.


Dressing for conference

I overdressed for the Labour conference, in a blazer and chinos, and have now dressed down for the Tories, in a big yellow jumper and jeans. Within this sea of business suits, I give the impression of Tony Benn’s ghost – minus the pipe.

For Sunday Mass, I went to the Birmingham Oratory, where they dress as they like, but always well. At one end of my pew was a family who had put their little boy in a seersucker jacket. On the other, a devout lady who wore a mantilla and knelt on the wooden floor, yet between her mortifications slipped on a pair of slippers: purple and fluffy.

I miss my home and my dog. His winter coat is coming through, which causes him to itch, and the only way to relieve it is to put him on your lap and scratch his back. My mother’s doing it while I’m away. Lucky woman.