I am sitting writing this in a corner of the Birmingham ICC, a conference centre and concert venue as though designed by Max Escher with a confusing array of staircases going everywhere and nowhere, it seems. But that is not what strikes me as odd. More, I am struck by this being the weirdest Conservative Party Conference I have ever attended — and the first one I went to was when Margaret Thatcher was still PM, a full nine prime ministers ago. And although it is always tempting to compare the Tories to the Repubican Party — and Labour to the Democrats — they couldn’t be more different.
Let’s just stay for a moment with events here in Birmingham. There is no set piece leader’s speech, because the leader — Rishi Sunak — is standing down, and he doesn’t want to give one. He made a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance, before going on to open a bakery in Sutton Coldfield — oh how the mighty have fallen.
