The Tory tribe has long been starved of happiness. It finds itself cast out of power, diminished in numbers, scorned by commentators, reduced to a shadow of its former self, quite likely doomed to extinction.
Today its hopes were focussed on a small figure dressed in white. Kemi Badenoch betrayed no hint of fear or gloom. Often she beamed like a proud head teacher who could not be more delighted by her pupils, or more confident that she can revive this failing school.
Our strength is as the strength of ten because our heart is true. That was the uplifting message she delivered. It does not matter that just now the party has few MPs, horrific poll ratings and dangerous competition from Reform.
Almost at once she hailed “Reform slayer Paul Bristow”, the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. We were invited to enter a Tennysonian world where a brave knight slays the Reform dragon.
Badenoch dared to be emotional: “You are more than just a political party to me. You are my family.”
Realising this might sound implausible, she added that in her case it is literally true: “I married the Deputy Chairman of my Association. I certainly would not be standing here today without my husband Hamish.”
This is her tribe, and it will succeed because it is “the only party that can meet the test of our generation”.
Their cause is just: “We are fighting for people who work hard and do the right thing…take risks and get things done.”
That line produced a standing ovation. At last the tribe had something to cheer. This would show the begrudgers, the watching media who had hoped to report from Manchester the mortal wounding of the Tory chief, that on the contrary she and her followers are in ebullient spirits and ready to take on anyone.
How scornful she was about Sir Keir Starmer. “This is squalid, Prime Minister,” she said after touching on the collapse of the China trial.
She denounced as “shameful” the imposition of a tax on education, “punishing parents who work hard to invest in their children’s future”.
Here was a moral appeal, not a narrowly technocratic one. Badenoch proclaimed that a new settlement is needed, based on conservative values: “We are Conservatives, not anarchists.”
She spoke of “a deep conservative conviction that work is a good in itself”. She and her followers wish to root out the something for nothing mentality and bring about the remoralisation of the nation.
High streets will be revived by abolishing business rates: “I won’t promise you free beer but I do want you to have cheaper beer.”
Again and again she evoked roars of applause, the tribe released from fear, experiencing a kind of catharsis, rising to its feet to show its support.
She left the best till last: the abolition of stamp duty on house purchases, “an unconservative tax” which afflicts people of every age: “Conservatives must speak to all generations.”
Under heavy pressure, Badenoch has delivered her happiest speech as Tory leader. At the end she was joined on stage by Hamish. How glad they looked, and how glad her supporters felt.
Perhaps outside the hall none of this was apparent, and nothing much will change. But within the tribe, loyalty to the chief has been reaffirmed, hope reasserted.
