Westminster wars

For me, the real female star of the tory conference was BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg. I bumped into her near midnight in the conference hotel, standing outside a lift on the 10th floor with a single cameraman, microphone at the ready. She is the rarest of Beeb creatures, one who is relentlessly professional, unfailingly polite and politically unbiased.

EUROPEAN Council President Donald Tusk calls on the PM to abandon her Chequers proposal. He clearly hadn’t watched her speech, in which Theresa May seemed already to have abandoned Chequers, not mentioning the C- word once in a 45-minute oration.

WhILe all eyes were on Boris, the unexpected heart-throb of the tory shindig was Brexit Secretary Dominic raab. After I had been spotted sitting with him in a cosy corner of a bar, countless doe- eyed women came up to me afterwards wanting to know what he’s really like. Clever, funny and handsome. one to watch and, unlike Boris, he adores his wife.