“That stench you can smell - that’s the smell of death”.
This is how one Tory MP described the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.
Labour’s gathering in Brighton last week felt like a celebration. The Tories are holding a post mortem.
There are three major problems facing the Conservatives.
The first is Theresa May. The Conservative leader has lost all authority.
Consider the behaviour of Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, who undermined her twice by publicly straying from the agreed Cabinet line on Brexit.
Previous Conservative Prime Ministers, like David Cameron or Margaret Thatcher, would have sacked Boris for that. The fact that Theresa May can’t do the same illustrates the weakness of her position, as senior Tory Lord Heseltine pointed out over the weekend.
In the past, many Conservatives have suggested Mrs May should stay in her post until Brexit takes place in March 2019. Only then should the party consider holding a leadership contest, the argument goes.
But more are coming round to the idea that the sooner she is replaced, the better.
Their argument is a simple one. Tories will never begin to sort out their problems and rebuild support until they have a new leader, and there’s no benefit in putting it off.
She could be gone by Christmas, according to one MP. Still, those who want her to go admit that there are colleagues who still believe a leadership contest should be delayed.
The second problem is Brexit, set to be a lengthy process which is far from over when the UK officially quits the EU in 2019.
One could make an argument that Labour has as much responsibility for Brexit as the Tories. Both parties voted to hold the referendum, both campaigned to remain in the EU and both voted to trigger Article 50, the official mechanism for leaving.
But in practice, the Tories own the issue. They are in power and it is seen as their project.
And it’s not going to be easy. Perhaps in 10 or 15 years, Brexit will look like a success. But for the first five years or so, there’s going to be uncertainty and economic pain, as even some arch-Brexiteers will concede (though they argue, of course, that it will be worth it in the long run).
Conservatives will be blamed if Brexit harms the economy.
The third problem is that Conservatives are losing in the argument. They’re the party of the free market, but the free market is in trouble.
In speeches to the Conservative conference, Cabinet members have accepted that capitalism isn’t working for everyone, and particularly for young people.
Chancellor Philip Hammond, for example, said: “We need to listen to those fears and concerns, we need to acknowledge the weariness at the long slog back from Labour’s recession, the pressure on living standards caused by slow wage growth and a spike in inflation.
“The frustration among the young who fear that the combination of student debt and sky high rents and house prices will condemn them never to access the opportunities of property ownership their parents enjoyed.”
It’s not a new idea. Theresa May actually set out a similar argument in her conference speech in 2016, before the disastrous general election and before Jeremy Corbyn’s transformation from national joke to national treasure.
But while they may understand the problem, the Conservative response looks feeble compared to Mr Corbyn’s bold offers.
Tory plans to freeze student tuition fees and cut monthly payments, for example, look unimpressive compared to Labour’s plan to abolish them entirely.
Perhaps Labour’s plans are unrealistic, but the Tories are struggling to explain why.
Some of Mrs May’s critics within the Conservative Party argue that she’s talked a lot about the failings of capitalism but failed to explain how she would make it work better.
Tories are in trouble, They may be dying.
There are now fewer than 100,000 members of the party.
There are local elections next year, including in Birmingham, Britain’s largest local authority, where every seat is being contested.
More local elections follow in 2019. And some Conservative MPs fear their party faces wipe-out in those polls, unless something changes.
Some MPs have raised concerns in public. Black Country MP James Morris said last week: “it could be argued that we have gone into reverse, crashing back to a time when people perceived us as divided, incompetent and out of touch.”
Bromsgove MP Sajid Javid, the Local Government Secretary, warned in an interview with the Observer that younger voters were attracted to Labour’s message.
He said: “Let’s say they were teenagers in the financial crisis 10 years ago and now they are starting to vote. Their political consciousness is maybe [emerging] during the time of the financial crisis and they hear a lot of negative stuff about the banking system and markets, and all of a sudden they are told nationalisation is the answer.”
Other MPs are even more outspoken in private.
“We are losing the battle”, said one. “If we carry on as we are then we may not survive at all,”
