Few answers in homework handed in by Badenoch

Mixing her metaphors with a brazen self-belief that few in her party possess these days, Kemi Badenoch - in her maiden speech to her first conference as Tory leader - was about as bullish as she could be: “We have a mountain to climb, but we have a song in our hearts, and we are up for the fight.”

- 

In truth, it is all she could do, short of getting up on the platform and telling them all that they may as well all pack up and go home. Or join Reform UK. She cannot be expected to admit that they are about as far away from regaining power as they have ever been, that the public won't be interested in listening to them for a very long time, that Nigel Farage is running away with the game, and, historically unpopular as Sir Keir Starmer and his party have become, they actually still lead the Tories.

There are plenty of other people who'll happily declare the Tories are finished, or, as Dominic Cummings, the destroyer of worlds, puts it, that they've “crossed the event horizon”. Ms Badenoch may well have been the only person in the conference hall in Manchester to believe what she was saying and that victory is possible. In that context, her terrifying self-belief may alienate her colleagues and repulse the general public, but it has its uses if it keeps the Conservatives in business and, eventually, supplants Reform. Her opponents’ support is, ironically, like Labour's before the last general election, wide but brittle. Mr Farage is not invincible.

There is a certain pretence, a bit of a confidence trick, in being an opposition party; therefore, Ms Badenoch has to tell her followers, and the country, that they can win the next election and how it might be done, improbable as it may feel now.