This year’s Conservative party conference contains a number of examples of a party having some genuinely original thoughts, rather than just running along the same tramlines as everyone else. The Bayeux Tapestry parody that the party has produced in order to attack its opponents is striking because it is a much more creative attack job than the usual amusing mugs, beers and T-shirts that you can normally pick up at a conference. On a much more serious level, Kemi Badenoch’s The Right Way pamphlet is an attempt to show the leader’s working on the big issues facing the country, rather than simply presenting a suite of policies as a fait accompli. 

It is exactly the kind of thing a party should be doing as it rebuilds from an historic election defeat at the end of a long and exhausting spell in government. The sense that everyone is doing the right thing is probably why so many people seem to think that the mood at the conference is pretty upbeat: they’ve got a leader who they are increasingly comfortable with and who is more popular than the party rather than acting as a drag on its poll rating, and........

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