Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Forget the Nasty Party. This is the Knackered Party.

Tory conference is yawning on with neither furious fights nor much evidence that anyone knows how to fix the party’s problems. The most energetic bit of it so far has been Theresa May’s round of media interviews this morning, in which the Prime Minister appeared to have been turned on to 1.5x speed as she nervously gabbled her answers and tried to sound happy. Other spots of colour come from non-MPs, such as Ruth Davidson. The hall isn’t packed, the atmosphere flat, and members and MPs look bewildered and miserable.

The Tories are starting to resemble Labour at the end of its last spell in government. The party was exhausted. It was aware that it needed to find new ways of talking to voters, but didn’t know what they were and was too tired really to work them out, so it spewed out random ideas that it often didn’t follow up.

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