When the Conservative party descends on Birmingham next week for its annual conference, you’d be forgiven for expecting a morose postmortem. With hundreds fewer MPs in attendance than last year and the final rounds of an altogether muted leadership contest less than six weeks away, this will be the first conference in 14 years at which Britain’s so-called natural party of government will arrive as a party exiled to opposition.
And yet listening to the wannabe leaders over recent weeks, this does not exactly sound like a group bracing for a deep reflection on the worst governance in modern times. As the current favourite, Robert Jenrick, put it in his campaign video: “I got elected 10 years ago and for most of that time I thought our politics broadly worked.”
