“What a contrast!” Richard Fuller, who claims to be the Conservative Party chairman, and may well be for all anyone knows, was striding across the stage. “Between the upbeat mood of our conference and Labour’s four days of misery!” 

He wasn’t wrong. This week has been a wonderfully cheery affair. Freed from the tedious restraints of government, Tory MPs have spent four days doing what they love most: plotting and scheming against each other. 

So the only question is who will be the person to lead the party back to glory

Do you have some dim idea that the year may not all have gone the Conservative Party’s way? That they might have come close to psephological extinction? There has been no hint of it in Birmingham. Future conferences will see depression, anger, bargaining and acceptance, but this one has been all about denial. After Labour’s difficult couple of weeks, the Tories have decided that the nation has returned to its senses. They are like a man convinced his ex is coming back to him. He’s heard that she’s bored of shagging Harry Styles and hanging out on yachts, and wants to get back to helping him run a chip shop in Droitwich. Any day now! 

So the only question is who will be the person to lead the party back to glory, a moment that some of those present seemed to believed could come as soon as next week. Wednesday morning was the climax of the week’s beauty parade, when each of the candidates would make a 20-minute pitch to the party and, perhaps, to the nation. 

Before the speeches began, we got a glimpse of the glory that awaited successful candidates, as George Osborne and Michael Gove took their seats in the press area. It’s ambitious of course, but perhaps one of the people we saw on that stage will some day co-host one of Britain’s top 200 podcasts, or edit a well-regarded lifestyle weekly. As befitted great men, the pair were accompanied by an entourage of two producers and a cameraman, recording their thoughts and impressions for millions of anxious ears. What a blessed age, where no one is ever more than a few seconds away from an Osborne truth bomb.

First up was Tom Tugendhat, the former soldier (doesn’t like to talk about it) generally viewed as the candidate of the party’s centrist dads. Although he has ardent fans, including among the party’s Scots, he is expected to be knocked out of the contest soon. This was his moment to turn things around, as David Cameron did in 2005 with his no-lectern, no notes speech. The army taught Tugendhat the value of surprise, and you can imagine our astonishment when we saw that he was going to give a no-lectern, no notes speech. 

“We have heard platitudes, not substance, in this campaign,” he began. We initially assumed this was intended as a criticism, but it became clear it had been his instruction to his speechwriter. He was against “Westminster political games” and “petty point-scoring”. The problem with the health service was that it had “bureaucrats in charge”. Enough of what he was against, what was he for? “As a patriot, I want what’s best for our country.” Thanks for that, Henry V at Agincourt.

Does Tugendhat have an analysis of why the country turned its back on the Conservative Party? Speaking in Westminster a couple of weeks ago he seemed to. This time, he kept it to himself. 

James Cleverly, up next, did, sort-of. The lectern had reappeared, a sign that he wasn’t messing about with any of this fashionable nonsense. He opened with an apology on behalf of his fellow Tory MPs. “Sorry,” he said. It turned out though that this was only addressed to Conservative activists. I’m sure they’ve had a rough time in the last few years, but they’re still quite low down my list of the last government’s victims.

“The British people are never wrong,” Cleverly went on. “The British people told us to go and sort ourselves out.” Here at least was the beginning of a theory of defeat. It didn’t get much further, sadly. The Cleverly pitch is that he’s a jolly fellow who could cheer everyone up, and he did a pretty good job of it in the hall. “Be proud of our record!” he told his audience, implying that perhaps the British people are at least occasionally misled. 

All of the speakers agreed that the party needed to fix the health service and build lots more houses, which makes it all the more mysterious that they didn’t do either of those things that time they were, you know, in government. If all you had to go on were their speeches, you would come to the conclusion that they lost the election because voters were furious about candidates being parachuted into safe seats: there was a lot more discussion of party organisation than partygate.

Not, to be clear, that the Conservatives aren’t sensitive to scandals. Keir Starmer’s clothing and football tickets were a constant refrain. Have there been any other recent prime ministers who were a bit too keen on the old gifts? Any who spent a global health emergency trying to get someone to fund gold wallpaper for their flat? Apparently not. The consensus is that denouncing Labour as hypocrites gives the Tories a pass for their own behaviour in office.

Cleverly had urged his party to be “more normal”, which is not terrible advice. But it was pleasing that the response from the back of the hall when he finished was a shout of “Hail to the emperor!” Still a little way to go on the normal front, I fear.

Speaking of completely normal people, here was Robert Jenrick. His status as front-runner in the contest tells you a lot about the party’s troubles. It’s not so much that the things he does are daft as that you feel a GCSE politics class could explain each of them to you. Tories don’t like Europe, so he’s found a European thing to be against. This time last year it was clear there would soon be a leadership contest, so he resigned, got a haircut and started on the Ozempic. His political style is as subtle as a toddler playing hide-and-seek, putting their head behind a cushion while their bottom sticks in the air.

His decision to cast himself as the heir to Johnson would also make sense if he weren’t so obviously the heir to Rishi Sunak. Here was a video of Jenrick sitting in a café in a suit and tie, talking awkwardly to Someone From The Lower Orders. It could have been a Two Ronnies sketch, but instead it was released by his own campaign. It’s possible they’ve decided to sabotage him. And honestly, who could blame them?

Perhaps their most brilliant move was to persuade their boss to frame his entire speech around the device that this was a moment that the party needed to choose a bold new leader, just like it did when it elected Margaret Thatcher exactly 50 years ago in 1974. Jenrick had told the conference that he admired the Iron Lady so much that his daughter’s middle name is “Thatcher” (toddler playing hide-and-seek, remember). Is any of this in any way undermined when you remember that Thatcher became leader in 1975?  Decide for yourself.

Did Jenrick at least have a view about why things had gone so badly? It was a very Sunak analysis: they hadn’t Rwanda-ed hard enough. The answer, Jenrick said, possibly having read it in a textbook the previous evening, was that the party had to “change”. They would be The New Conservatives. Where the Old Conservatives had endless stupid arguments about the EU, the New Conservatives would have a big fight about the European Court of Human Rights. “You know that I loathe empty rhetoric,” Jenrick said, and I’m ashamed to say that we all laughed very loudly. 

Like Tugendhat, Jenrick had decided to go for the walk-and talk. So did the final turn, Kemi Badenoch. Maybe the crucial thing about Cameron’s speech wasn’t the walking bit. Certainly if, as seems possible, Cleverly moves ahead after this conference, we can look forward to a decade of politicians taking the bold decision to stand still and read their speech out properly.

By this time, we had been going for well over an hour, and patience was wearing thin. What was Badenoch’s diagnosis? The Tories had lost because of Net Zero, along with a general pursuit of wokery. This had angered the nation so much that it turned to the Labour party. “Unlike the left, we know right from wrong,” she announced, airily waving away a number of counter-examples over the past decade or so. 

Finally they were done, trooping back onto the stage for a final wave, united at least in their determination not to look very hard into why they actually did so badly in July. It’s not like it would be difficult to find out. There are plenty of podcasts about this stuff. 

As we left, Jeremy Hunt dashed past us towards the press seats. He doesn’t have much of a job any more, and he may have heard that Osborne’s producer was still there.