Inside my most chaotic Tory conference ever – as members fear election defeat

At 11.30pm in a sweaty hotel ballroom, the woman who almost became PM unveiled her Tory vision – and no one listened.

“Shut the f*** up!”, shouted the host as hundreds brayed over Penny Mordaunt ’s plea to “keep calm, carry on”.

The Cabinet minister pleaded unity, defended her boss’s 45p Income Tax cut for the rich, and shouted: “Our policies are great, but our comms is s***!”

An hour later, it emerged the cut was being axed.

The incident summed up a Tory conference marked by less discipline and more nihilism than any I can remember since I joined the politics beat in 2015.

And it came a week after the first Labour conference I’ve been to where party chiefs believed they will win.

Not for nothing did an advert for the “world’s biggest pantomime” – Elf – loom over Birmingham’s ICC.

After days of rows, things got surreal as Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said it had “been brilliant, the atmosphere is fantastic” and the Tories “really, really haven’t” been fighting.

Tory chairman Jake Berry even enthused: “Watch out Sir Humphrey! You’ve just got the Yes! Yes! Yes! Prime Minister!”

But one Sunak-supporting MP said they’d “dodged a bullet” by not serving in government, it was a “terrible situation” – and the Prime Minister can’t communicate.

“Why does she think – even if she’s right about everything – the voters will reward her and say we’ll vote Tory, thanks very much?” they fumed.

“Like sheep, every extra day my colleagues spend in this government, they’re more trapped in the nightmare.”

A former No10 advisor told the Mirror: “It’s over. They’re tearing themselves apart.” A senior Tory added: “It’s not organised plotting. MPs are genuinely concerned about what the future holds for them.”

Blue collar Tory Rob Halfon added: “There’s no other way to say that things have been grim, grim at conference, and grim over the past week.”

Despite chaos on the markets, aides and politicians started the four-day summit with brave faces.

On Saturday night, Liz Truss joked with aides about a push to grow more British salad over dinner at swanky curry house Asha’s.

But after the tax cut U-turn, order broke down. One leading Tory claimed up to 80 Tory MPs – double the number needed to defeat the government – had been ready to oppose the tax cut.

Yet Suella Braverman accused centrist Tories of a “coup” and “airing dirty linen”. Levelling-Up Secretary Simon Clarke agreed.

And another front opened up over the PM considering a real-terms cut to benefits.

A dizzying line-up of Tories demanded a welfare rise with inflation – ranging from right-wingers Esther McVey and Lord Frost, to centre-right Damian Green, Mel Stride and Michael Gove, and Cabinet ministers Penny Mordaunt and Robert Buckland.

“The Government shouldn’t take on battles it can’t win,” said Lord Frost. This from the man who was in charge of the Brexit deal.

A No10 insider said more ministers had raised concerns in private. They mused cryptically: “The policy is… dynamic”.

Welfare chief Chloe Smith repeatedly refused to comment at a fringe in the Library of Birmingham. Someone read their George Orwell, because they held it in Room 101.

The tax U-turn emerged when Kwasi Kwarteng fled a dinner with The Sun before his main course turned up, as the Chancellor was summoned for crisis talks.

The newspaper’s enterprising reporters chased down those involved to get to the truth. Literally.

It involved a senior journalist shoving his foot in the closing door of a lift, after midnight, to stop a No10 official escaping his questions.

The next morning, the Chancellor let slip that Liz Truss made the decision – then swiftly claimed they’d decided it together.

Visibly sweating in the conference hall that afternoon, he joshed: “What a day!”.

He announced his plan to cut the debt would be brought forward, but almost no one noticed he’d said it until hours later.

Likewise, Chloe Smith had a big reveal planned – that £324 cost-of-living payments would arrive from November 8. But she seemingly fluffed her lines, saying it would be “in the month of November”.

At least Environment Secretary Ranil Jayawardena landed a big policy, vowing to raise fines for rogue sewage leaks to £250m. Despite 12 years of Tory rule, he said in a Truss-like flourish: “That! Is! Not! On!”

As many left early to avoid rail strikes, at least the Prime Minister headed off fears she would fail to fill the conference hall for her big speech. Most seats were happily occupied with bums.

Liz Truss personally chose 90s hit Moving on Up as her walk-on song, which opens with the words: “Your time is up”. Its writer then lashed out at her “shower of a government”. The PM’s Press Secretary retorted: “I don’t know who he is.”

She promised “an iron grip on the nation’s finances”, after vowing to borrow £70bn next year alone.

She accidentally announced she’d scrap all EU laws by the “end of the year”, only for her team to confirm she actually meant the end of 2023.

And her claim she was the first comprehensively-educated PM sparked furious debate about Gordon Brown and Theresa May. Her spokesman said: “I’m not gonna do a sort of pop quiz”.

Perhaps her best moment was when two Greenpeace protesters tried to disrupt her, prompting grins from the PM and encouraging shouts of “go on Liz!” “I think it actually worked to her advantage,” one MP told me.

It compares to a Labour conference so calm after years of in-fighting, one Starmer ally branded it “unnerving”.

“I’ve noticed a lot more Tory lobbyists – the sort of people who are normally outside the Red Lion [a pub next to Parliament],” one Labour figure said last week. “They think the Tories have lost their marbles.”

Over the last two weeks, journalists, lobbyists and politicians have talked openly of a Labour victory in 2024.

Revered pollster John Curtice warned the Tory poll collapse was faster than Black Wednesday.

But a source close to Keir Starmer ’s leadership warned the “electoral map is very, very tough”.

Labour – still trailing third in Scotland – would need a bigger win than Tony Blair ’s first landslide, they said.

“We’ve started to have a chance to be heard but there’s absolutely no complacency,” they added.

A Tory MP added: “We’ve already seen a month is a long time in politics.

“It’s far too soon to predict what will happen next.”

Whatever does, we’re in for a bumpy ride.