Conservative party

Perhaps it’s age, perhaps disillusion, or perhaps party conferences really aren’t what they used to be, but I have struggled this autumn against something that has seemed to be carrying me away. As with a swimmer drawn from the shore by a strong current he cannot see, I’m trying not to leave but the people on the beach seem to be getting smaller, and the holiday noise, the shouts and laughter, grows faint. I knew my duty on arriving on the south coast for the Liberal Democrats’ annual gathering. It was to sit through conference debates in the vile windowless warehouse that is the Brighton Centre, scarring the waterfront with a great slab of concrete that’s blind to the sea, and take the temperature of a party in sharply reduced circumstances.

After voting for Brexit earlier this year did you come over all homophobic? I mean after you did all the obvious stuff like beat up a few ethnic minorities and burn a Torah. A piece in the Guardian at the weekend explains that ‘Homophobic attacks in UK rose 147 per cent in three months after Brexit vote.’ It claims that this shows how ‘toxicity fostered by the EU referendum debate spread beyond race and religion, new figures suggest’. None of which makes any sense. Who would decide, after voting Brexit, to attack the gays?

People attack the whole business of having an EU referendum, but one of its pluses was that it invited millions of people who had never before been asked to form an opinion on the European question to do so. They responded thoughtfully — perhaps more thoughtfully than people do in general elections when a sizeable minority vote pretty much automatically for one party or another. We quickly developed a much more educated electorate. The idea, strongly touted immediately after the result, that the voters’ majority view could be set aside by Parliament because they didn’t know what they were talking about has almost completely vanished from political debate, with the noisy exception of interventions by Kenneth Clarke.

Mrs May’s plain style may well come to irritate people in a few months, but just now it is extremely popular. The lack of glamour, soundbites, smart clothes, and ministerial overclaiming is a blessed relief. I can’t pretend that I find Mrs May an endearing figure, but when she said in her speech that Britain should not go round saying ‘We are punching above our weight’ (a phrase beloved of the Foreign Office), I almost wanted to hug her. There isn’t even much party knockabout. In the old days, any speech which made some pathetic jibe against ‘the brothers last week in Blackpool’ could be guaranteed laughter and applause.

Theresa May has brought the curtain down on this year's Tory party conference with a speech in which she made a snatch for the centre ground. The Prime Minister pledged to stick up for the working class and went on the attack against the 'sneering elite', who May said looked down on others. But how successful was her speech? And did it tell us anything more about May? On the Spectator's Coffee House Shots podcast, James Forsyth says: I think she is keener on the state than most Conservatives are. I think there was a lot of aim taken at the liberal elite. There was a lot of vicar's daughter style emphasis on the obligations you owe to the other people in your family and the other people in your community.

Theresa May hasn’t been Prime Minister for 100 days yet but already she’s achieved what few other Tory leaders before her have done: get her eurosceptic backbenchers on board. In doing this, May will have made the likes of David Cameron green with envy. So how did she succeed in this task? It seems her speech on Sunday lived up to the high expectations of the Brexiteers and managed to warm even the stoniest of hearts among the traditional Tory troublemakers. In return, they’ve spent this year’s conference determined to sing the joys of May. That show of support was on display last night from two of the biggest names in the Brexit band. Jacob Rees-Mogg and John Redwood couldn’t have been clearer: they were fully behind Theresa May’s Brexit vision.

Philip Hammond is the unlikely headline act of the day at the Conservative party conference. The Chancellor used his speech to row back on his predecessor George Osborne's plan to cut the deficit and also promised to up spending. But Hammond also had some words of warning about Brexit. He said that while the referendum vote marked the 'beginning of a new age', there was no room for complacency as he pledged to prepare Britain for possible turbulence ahead. So how did his speech go down? James Forsyth, who was in the hall listening, has this to say on the podcast: 'Philip Hammond isn't a classical orator. This was not a tub-thumbing speech at all. I think the hall listened respectfully but it wasn't exciting. There was a moment where he said this subject doesn't set the pulses racing.

Ladies and gentlemen, on the 23rd of June the British people voted for change. And this is going to be the biggest change for a generation: we are going to leave the European Union. It was we, the Conservative Party, who promised the British people a referendum. It was David Cameron, a Conservative Prime Minister, who honoured that promise. And now it will be this government, a Conservative government that will lead the United Kingdom out of the European Union and into a brighter and better future. This must be a team effort. And I am proud to count myself part of Theresa May’s team. I don't know what it is about our great women leaders, but aren’t we lucky that they’re there when we need them?