Four contenders and the biggest platform of the year to make their case to be leader of the opposition.
Welcome to the Conservatives’ annual conference in Birmingham – a four day job interview in the glare of the spotlight, with the axe falling on two of the four candidates in just 10 days when MPs vote to narrow them down again.
It is a conference like no other. Rishi Sunak is leader in name only and certainly not providing direction: this is the first Tory conference without a leader’s speech since 1963 – when Harold Macmillan was in hospital with suspected prostate cancer.
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Yet it does not feel like a gathering of a party that just suffered an existential election defeat less than 100 days ago. This conference – with multiple overflow tents covering as big a footprint around the Birmingham conference centre than I can remember – shows none of the shrinkage often seen in some opposition conferences.
There’s a similar perhaps delusionally bullish vibe among MPs and defeated candidates, who are lapping up the short term tempest faced by Sir Keir Starmer’s government and display a belief the gap back to power may not be as big as they feared mere weeks ago.
Even the Conservative candidates suggest they think “one more heave” will be enough to return them to Downing Street rather than a massive radical top to bottom rethink, offering more continuity than change in the opening pitches of the conference this morning.
It will soon be for MPs, and eventually the membership to decide whether this is the right approach.
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