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Outside the party there was a consensus on the Tory’s objective for this week. They had to make it seem as if election defeat was not absolutely inevitable. Somehow, and against all the odds, they needed to make enough people believe that there was still a reason of some sort to vote Tory.
I was not their target audience, to be fair. Them getting me to change my mind on this issue was never likely. But there must have been some people out there where it was at least possible that they might have just done that.
I now don’t think so, not after the display on offer so far. All that the Tories have succeeded in doing is to prove that they are an utterly lost cause. Whatever hope they had before going to Manchester must have vapourised now. They are, literally, hopeless.
Sunak’s disaster is the mismanagement of HS2. Whatever his decision, his inability to make it is enough to damn him, for good.
Other ministers have totally failed. Gillian Keegan’s education idea was, for example, a non-statutory, guidance only, ban on mobile phones in schools. Ninety nine per cent of schools already have them. What she did not offer was money, which is what every public service needs.
She, like every minister so far, failed that test. They have reduced themselves to the status of memo writers to fill out their days until better paid jobs in the private sector will be their reward (they hope) for suffering all this.
Jeremy Hunt was the exception. He offered cuts, but no one wanted to hear because somewhere else whilst he was speaking Liz Truss was reviving memories of her premiership, to an ever grateful audience, including Nigel Farage.
There was more from her of the madness she revealed whilst in office. She will convince some Tory MPs that the trouble with Sunak is that he is a socialist at heart, and they must release their inner Conservatism. The rest of the country just think she is mad. You didn’t need to watch much of what she said to work out why they might do so.
There is, however, in this near total collapse of a party that likes to think of itself as the greatest political winning machine in democratic history, singeing much more worrying to think about. That is its headlong rush to the far-right.
Remember that the creation of division, real or imagined, is the first tool of the fascist.
Braverman is doing it on migration and multiculturism.
Other ministers do it by trashing Labour policies that never existed. The claim that it had backed a meat tax was being rolled out again on Sky last night, and it was total nonsense. In fairness, Sophy Ridge made it clear that it was.
Keegan is trying it with mobile phones.
Meanwhile, Sunak resorts to double speak, another fascist tool. He is claiming his giving up on everything is all about taking long term decisions, when the exact opposite is the truth.
And during all this, the dogmatists will take delight as the puppets on the stages sing to their tunes.
There is delight to be had at Tory disarray from which it is virtually impossible to imagine that they can recover before an election.
There is concern that the alternative is a hollowed-out Labour Party that apes so much of what the Tories do.
But lurking underneath it all is the concern that the wreck of the Tories will turn into a full on fascist party, dedicated to a return to power at whatever the cost. There seems to be nothing to stop that. And the prospect is frightening when Labour will do nothing to stop them returning to power one day – not least by introducing PR.
My pleasure is decidedly muted.
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