Terrified Tories struggle for strategy as Keir Starmer shows he's ready to be Prime Minister

Conservative messaging was a mess after a Labour conference which showed the party has got its confidence back.

The Labour party are on course to win the next election and the Tories have absolutely no idea what to do about it.

Sir Keir Starmer’s party are soaring ahead in the polls, and managed to get through party conference without a single incident of infighting, an event almost as historic as Labour’s win in Rutherglen and Hamilton West.

There was not just excitement but expectation, a feeling that goes beyond data. One supporter told me this felt like the conference of 96, on the eve of Tony Blair’s landslide, an event that saw her pour champagne into her dog’s water bowl. “He didn’t understand it, but it meant something to me”, she smiled.Then there’s the business presence, with lobbyists spending more money than I’ve ever seen at a Labour conference, with exhibition halls I didn’t know existed during the Corbyn years opened out and filled to the brim. This pursuit was also seen in the schedules of MPs, with one telling me they had 600 companies ask to meet.

The contrast with Tory conference could not have been clearer, an event lighter on business and belief. Labour conference was dominated by discussion of policy, the Conservative event instead a feeding frenzy, as leadership hopefuls swooped around Rishi Sunak’s premiership like vultures. The stories were infighting or indiscipline, areas that have been stamped out by the Labour party. If Liz Truss’s conference was the fall of Rome, Mr Sunak’s was the aftermath, fallen nobles fighting over the rubble.

This combined with Labour’s announcement of 1.5 million homes being built leaves the Tories in a difficult place, narrowing their voter base while Labour rapidly expands its own. Much like Boris Johnson’s coalition of voters, Sir Keir has created a narrative with mass appeal, offering housing and opportunity to the young, while promising safer streets and fiscal discipline to those on the right.

Now the Tories are scared, lacking a coherent or organise attack line that stands up to scrutiny, perfectly fitting the conspiracy theory brand of scaremongering they’ve pivoted to out of desperation. Responding to Labour’s housing announcement, Tory MPs tweeted it was the same number as their own promise, perhaps forgetting Rishi Sunak had abolished his own housing targets, with a parliament committee finding they would miss it “by a country mile”. Keir’s policy platform is minimal, and the Tories are attacking it from a glass house they failed to build.

Other avenues of attack were migration not being mentioned in Starmer’s speech, which is brave when the Tories are the ones responsible for “stopping the boats”.

So left with no option, following failed smears about Jimmy Savile or Sir Keir buying a donkey farm for his dying mum, Conservative party chair Greg Hands has now claimed the Labour leader wants people to forget Angela Rayner is his deputy. Going after a working-class single mum is a stupid strategy anyway, but given she gave a speech and appeared with Starmer at numerous events, it is simply a lie.The Tories need policy, strategy, and a complete rethink of how they can beat the Labour party. The current offering will seem not just ousted, but obliterated.