A poster outside the Tory conference venue in Birmingham said it all. It was an advertisement for “the world’s biggest pantomime”.
The Conservatives certainly put on a show this week. They staged a spectacle of chaos, confusion and calamity.
All political parties have experienced difficult conferences.
Things go wrong – ask Theresa May about coughing through her speech as the backdrop collapsed or Ed Miliband forgetting whole sections of his speech – but this was the most shambolic gathering ever held by a governing party.
To be in Birmingham was to witness the most successful political organisation in British history collapse before your eyes.
Trying to keep pace with the way it hurtled towards the ground was exhausting.
The week began with Liz Truss telling Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday she was sticking by her tax plans only for them to be ditched at a panicked late-night meeting.
The U-turn was so abrupt and handled so ineptly there was no time to tell the Cabinet.
And Truss had already pre-recorded interviews with regional TV stations in which she defended the 45p tax cut. At a stroke the PM tore up her only calling card: a cut-price Margaret Thatcher who was prepared to take tough decisions.
The fall-out was immediate and brutal. Party discipline collapsed as the blame game began.
In a Sky News interview, Truss refused to say if she had trust in her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
Perhaps this was not surprising after his speech in which he dismissed the run on the pound that sparked a mortgage crisis as mere “turbulence.”
As one MP put it, Truss managed to “p***off” the Tory right who backed the tax cuts and “p***off” party moderates who believe she has re-contaminated the Tories as the nasty party.
Rows that would once have taken place behind closed doors were conducted in the open.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she was “disappointed” by the 45p tax U-turn and accused centrist Tories of a “coup”.
Levelling-Up Secretary Simon Clarke said: “Suella speaks a lot of good sense, as usual.” As Truss struggled to keep a lid on the Cabinet feuding she found herself having to fight off another rebellion, this time on plans to freeze benefits.
Ministers Penny Mordaunt and Robert Buckland broke ranks to call for welfare payments to rise in line with inflation.
They were backed by an alliance of right-wingers such as Esther McVey and Lord Frost, and centre-right MPs such as Damian Green, Mel Stride and Michael Gove.
From the side lines, former Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries tweeted that Truss had no mandate for her policies, while former Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said she had only 10 days in which to turn things around.
Such was the disarray that there were even U-turns on U-turns.
At one point Kwarteng’s team briefed he would bring forward his financial statement earmarked for November 23 only for him to deny this before finally confirming this would be the case.
Not surprisingly, Tory delegates were either in denial or despair.
Some refused to accept their plight. Even as the ship started to sink they insisted the band keep playing. They carried on attending receptions, drinking champagne and cocktails in the bars and, when not asleep, applauding ministers’ speeches.
It was like watching members of the WI trying to hold a tea party in the middle of a Muhammad Ali and George Foreman bout.
The only ones looking truly happy were reporters for left-wing newspapers and Gove.
Gove, whose Cabinet career had been terminated by Truss, dashed from fringe meeting to fringe meeting with the beaming grin of a smiling assassin.
Dozens of other MPs had not even bothered to turn up at what was quickly starting to resemble a funeral.
“They are all busy polishing their CVs as they know they are going to be unemployed,” said one observer.
Tory MP Rob Halfon summed up the mood, saying: “There’s no other way to say that things have been grim, grim at conference, and grim over the past week.”
One former Cabinet minister said she feared for the party’s future. She said the seeds of the Conservatives’ decline can be traced back to Brexit when they abandoned economic seriousness for an ideological dream.
“Our reputation for being the party of sound money and financial responsibility was the thread which bound the party together. That has now gone,” she said.
The other glue which has united the Tories is their determination to be in power.
Wiser Tory heads worry that once in opposition the party could split between the libertarian right-wingers with whom Truss has allied herself and those who still believe in one nation Conservatism.
A former No10 adviser told the Mirror: “It’s over. They’re tearing themselves apart.”
The party faithful dutifully applauded the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday.
For a few minutes they denied the truth about her unpopularity, the state of the economy or the damage she has caused to the party and the country.
But the battles that started in Birmingham remain unresolved.
The fights over fracking, the environment and benefits will recommence once they return to Westminster.
The Tories have been digging their own grave for years. This was the week they ordered the coffin.
