Never in a conference season was so little said by so many to so few

Two years since the last Tory conference, and astonishingly little had changed – on the surface at least. Cabinet ministers preened and strutted around the hall flanked by mafioso entourages of their staffers, walking and talking very quickly about Very Important Things. Occasionally, one ministerial gaggle would collide with another, with right of way determined according to seniority – a clash reminiscent of Serena Williams bulldozing straight through a lowlier-seeded player at change of ends.

Eager young politicos clustered around Tory backbenchers for photo ops – for four days only, the likes of David Amess MP could be recast as Mick Jagger.

Less than half of the number of delegates who attended the conference in 2019 made it to Manchester this time, but in classic Tory Mum style, the party was determined to make do and mend. They’d downsized their hall, cramming members in like sardines, and banning other events from going ahead while ministers were speaking from the main stage. Perhaps, thanks to this rather overzealous crowd control, some hapless journos were still scrabbling around for patchy Wi-fi as the Chancellor took to the stage for his big speech.

In the end, I’m not sure we missed much. As ever, Rishi went hard on the Tories’ single biggest selling-point – being the “not-labour” party – and masterfully framed his tax rises as the only responsible reaction to his own department’s regrettable tendency to spend like a drunken Trotskyist.

He delivered a futuristic paean to “automation computers” and “artificial intelligence scholarships”, while the conference internet flickered in and out like an Edison prototype bulb.

Michael Gove managed seven minutes of truly magisterial waffle later that afternoon, praising every imaginable kind of Tory and Tory school of thought – Thatcher, Disraeli, Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen (even obliquely, Theresa May via Gove’s choice of warm-up music – Dancing Queen), though the audience was left little the wiser about what “levelling up” really meant. Never in the field of conference season was so little said by so many to so few.

It is always difficult to gauge the feeling of the Tory faithful, owing to their impeccable manners.

Even the lamest wisecrack or blandest sound bite will usually attract a polite titter or a smattering of applause.

While Labour members will tussle and nip like ferrets in a sack, fighting in Tory world tends to be sneakier and conducted behind a facade of mandarin serenity.

There were, however, occasional glimmers of dissent. Libertarian Tories smoked mutinously between fringe events, and outside the flashy Cop26 lounge, local councillors grumbled about petrol shortages and Net Zero.

One MP agonised about polling projections showing a much-depleted majority, which he believed was probably a little too generous. “But we’ve got two years to go yet.” Well that’s all right then.