For the depleted tribe of Tory members, a thin crowd of diehard acolytes and the weary leadership candidate teams arriving at the party’s Birmingham conference, this is the week that the jelly will begin to set in the mould of the party’s fortunes. It is still a very shaky dish.

Given Keir Starmer’s mensis horribilis, a grinding month of badly-handled entanglements over donor favours and turf wars in No 10, as well as an impending Budget which is going to hit a swathe of voters with new or rising taxes, the Opposition is hardly short of material.

The problem for the four remaining hopefuls – Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat – is that their focus is on how to square the differing preferences and aversions of a rump of 121 Conservative MPs with a voter base which will have the final say between two candidates, while at the same time explaining how it will get votes back from Labour in enough quantities to put it on the road to contention.

One reason the jelly remains so irresolutely wobbly is that the candidates are struggling in the area that matters most to their chance of building a durable assault on the Government: the economy, and the party’s plan to boost flabby British growth. So we have heard from Kemi Badenoch this weekend on the need for a more “hard-nosed” policy on immigration”, insisting on the integration of new immigrants and asylum........

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