Spare a thought for the Conservative party. It\u2019s hard believing in meritocracy, yet finding yourself polling at 15%. It\u2019s even harder having wanged on mercilessly for decades about natural selection, yet now constantly finding yourself appearing in the same sentence as the phrase \u201cfacing extinction\u201d.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s harder still to find polling guru John Curtice doing panels at your conference<\/a> in which he outlines the route back to even the same time zone as being in contention. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to get yourself back to base camp,\u201d Curtice explained in one mild-mannered drive-by on Sunday. \u201cAt the moment you frankly can\u2019t even see the Himalayas.\u201d Given the well-documented traffic issues on Everest these days, we have to face the possibility that more people have reached the summit of the world\u2019s highest mountain this year than have joined the Conservative party.<\/p>\n To the party\u2019s gathering in Manchester, then, where the leadership of Kemi Badenoch continues to come off as a performance art piece entitled All Fall Down. It\u2019s not so much a conference as one of those soap montages that signal the death of a character. By the time Robert Jenrick was on stage at midday holding up a judge\u2019s wig like a sock puppet and promising to \u201ctake our country back\u201d (again), 20 councillors had defected to Reform<\/a> since breakfast. The conference is so mad and sad that it features an exhibition of Margaret Thatcher\u2019s clothes, which various Tory ugly sisters and brothers have been metaphorically trying to squeeze themselves into ever since the party ousted her a full 34 years ago. After this many failed impostors, it\u2019s just possible they should smash the glass slipper and get on the apps instead.<\/p>\n Begging the party to swipe right \u2013 quite a bit further right \u2013 we have Jenrick, the endlessly metamorphic shadow justice secretary who\u2019s had more eras than Taylor Swift. If you felt a seismic straining in the north-west this week, that was Jenrick desperately trying not to do an Andy Burnham and cast this conference as The Official Launch Party of a Showboy. Here, he\u2019s been at pains to suggest, he\u2019s just one of the team \u2013 just a humble fledgling content creator as at home in the world of short-form video as he is halfway up a lamp-post in a tight polo, carrying a six-pack of made-in-China St George flags.<\/p>\n Robert Jenrick at the 2025 Conservative party conference. Photograph: Gary Roberts Photography\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n Regrettably \u2013 or, as far as he\u2019s concerned, fortunately \u2013 some recorded comments of Jenrick\u2019s from a Conservative association dinner back in March were leaked to this newspaper<\/a>, in which he lamented a visit to Handsworth in Birmingham where he \u201cdidn\u2019t see another white face\u201d. A few sentences further on, Jenrick stated \u201cit\u2019s not about the colour of your skin or your faith\u201d, which gave Badenoch the leeway to defend him<\/a> this morning, although she did explain: \u201cI don\u2019t think this is where the debate should be, about how many faces people see on the street and what they look like.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure she doesn\u2019t. Then again, Badenoch is a master of this kind of insouciantly robotic understatement, apparently telling a meeting<\/a> of Conservative association chiefs a couple of days ago that the party\u2019s poll ratings are \u201cnot where I want us to be\u201d. Which reminds me that John Curtice had a few other truth bombs to drop. \u201cThe Liberal Democrat vote is now much more geographically concentrated than your vote,\u201d he informed Tories at his conference event, \u201cand the electoral system is now treating you like it treated the Liberal Democrats. And so although the Liberal Democrats are just behind you in the polls, they are going to almost undoubtedly win more seats than you.\u201d Oof.<\/p>\n It must be said this wasn\u2019t the vibe you\u2019d have got from shadow chancellor Mel Stride\u2019s speech. \u201cLet\u2019s face it,\u201d claimed Mel hilariously, \u201cwe\u2019re the only party that gets it.\u201d Nkay. Go on. \u201cAnd that means we have to face some hard truths to which other parties turn a blind eye.\u201d By way of an example, he announced the Conservatives would slash the civil service to 2016 levels. And yet, where was the hard truth \u2013 namely that the civil service has ballooned since then because of all the extra stuff it\u2019s had to do since Brexit, the Conservative party triumph with the world\u2019s longest list of small print?<\/p>\n Still, there has been the odd bright spot. Unable to accept that the lethal force of the term \u201cBoriswave\u201d is going to permanently do for him, the undead Boris Johnson has spent recent days mounting embarrassing rearguard actions against his own policies. On Monday, he could be found popping up in frantically casual fashion to say he \u201cwent far too fast\u201d on net zero, and that he personally \u201cgot carried away\u201d. Of course, of course. Ever since Reform started saying<\/a> \u201cBoriswave\u201d every five seconds, Johnson appears to have shed devotees at a quite alarmingly fast rate. Nigel Farage is his political Mounjaro. Even Johnson\u2019s most devoted superfan, Nadine Dorries, has been seduced<\/a>. She\u2019ll still love him and everything, but it must be tough for Boris to face up to the fact that Nadine has defected to a party whose biggest diss literally has his name in it.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, the Tory leadership prefers instead to suggest the party eating its lunch is touting policies that fall apart under scrutiny. As Badenoch whined this week: \u201cReform is saying stuff because it hasn\u2019t thought it all through.\u201d Well, yes. In time-honoured tradition, they are just saying some shit to get elected. Which is, let\u2019s actually face it, a little something they learned from their predecessors. More than anyone else on the political spectrum, the recent iteration of the Conservative party popularised the idea that actions did not have consequences, that cake could be both had and eaten, and that there were no trade-offs on the route to what Badenoch was this week still calling<\/a> \u201cthe sunlit uplands\u201d.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Matters of Opinion<\/p>\n Guardian columnists and writers on what they\u2019ve been debating, thinking about, reading, and more<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n If only Labour had absorbed these lessons. Yet incredibly, after having had to live through the post-2016 convulsions alongside the rest of us, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves failed to realise that their own bullshit would also not survive contact with the reality of government. As was pointed out at the time<\/a>, Starmer and Reeves sought power by making ridiculous promises about what they wouldn\u2019t have to do, either because they were hopelessly naive, or just hopeless. They are now reaping that particular whirlwind, which will reach category 5 with next month\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n Thus it increasingly feels as though cautionary tales are this country\u2019s only remaining manufacturing success story. Jenrick\u2019s speech today ended with him gibbering: \u201cI can feel Britain\u2019s fortunes turning.\u201d We all can. Perhaps the kindest way of putting it is that the Conservative party is part of the new \u201cleft behind\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spare a thought for the Conservative party. 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