Conservative party

The Government’s deal with the DUP is done - but it has come at a price. The confidence and supply agreement - which falls short of a formal coalition but will be enough to keep Theresa May in power - will set the Government back £1bn. The deal spells out £200m for infrastructure, £75m for ultra-fast broadband, £100m over five years to tackle deprivation, £50m on health and education, £100m on health service reform and £50m on mental health funding in Northern Ireland. Despite the cost, though, there’ll be a big sigh of relief among the Conservatives that the deal (which you can read here) is now, finally, across the line.

Theresa May’s body language on leaving the European Council summit last night shows quite how much of a toll the past few weeks have taken on the Prime Minister. She looks exhausted. Now, you don’t have to feel sorry for May: she did, after all, decide to call the snap election that has proved to be her undoing - even though so many people thought she would be mad not to call it with the Labour party appearing to be so weak. But it is worth noting that the most important people in government - and the most important people involved in the attempts to keep the government together - are all totally exhausted and that this exhaustion inevitably has an impact on the way government works.

Should it be Boris? He was twice elected mayor of a Labour city and if the Tory mission is to stop Jeremy Corybn, surely you need someone charismatic to see off a populist. Then again, David Davis is a dependable caretaker, a bruiser who can hold the line on Brexit. Or why not skip a generation? There’s the articulate Priti Patel and the accomplished Dominic Raab. And to make this party go with a bang, why not ask Michael Gove to be someone’s campaign manager? He’ll change his mind on the day and then: pow! They’ll all form a circular firing squad, like last time, and whoever’s left standing wins. To their credit, the Conservatives recognise their capacity for self-destruction.

Today’s exchanges between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn in the Commons following the Queen’s Speech showed how much difference confidence makes to a leader’s performance. While Corbyn will never be a scintillating orator - speaking for far too long and ending with a sentence that seemed to be aimed more at entering the Guinness Book of Records than at making any sense - he made the most of the opportunity that such a threadbare speech presented him with. The election result may not have delivered him into government, but it has made him look like far more of a winner than the woman who called the poll.

I'm not sure I've ever been so pessimistic about this country's future, and I'm not usually a barrel of laughs to start with. Aside from the terrorism, and the recent tragedy in North Kensington, there are real black clouds in the distance. Investors are being put off Britain, a problem that pre-dates Brexit but is surely aggravated by it. There seems little hope that the Tories will follow Philip Hammond in pursuing a more moderate line in Europe. (Would the catchphrase 'Stop, Hammondtime', galvanise the public, I wonder? Kids still like MC Hammer right?). Meanwhile the opposition - even moderate members - are now calling for people's private property to be 'requisitioned', using heightened anger and emotion in order to trample over the most fundamental of rights.

Every discussion with a Tory Minister or MP now ends up with a go through of the runners and riders for the leadership. But just as important as the personality is the policies. One of the major problems for the Tories at the last election was that they had almost no positive offer; what did they offer a thirty something on fifty thousand a year who didn’t stand to inherit anything? Tories can’t expect young people to be capitalists, when they have no capital. This makes the need for new ideas on the centre-right a matter of some urgency. Without them, Jeremy Corbyn—or someone very like him—will be Prime Minister at some point in the near future.