Labour set out some great policy ideas. They won’t use them. The Tories should

Conservatives can send only one official observer to the Labour party conference, which is a shame because a few days in the febrile, fratricidal atmosphere in Manchester would have been a tonic to Tory spirits. From the bar of the Radisson hotel, one could witness plotting of the most poisonous and spectacular kind. Rival camps would nod to each other across the room, even as they cheerfully briefed against each other. The instinct for self-preservation seemed to be draining from this party, leaving behind the most extraordinary opportunity for David Cameron.

As they gather for their conference next week in Bournemouth, the Conservatives intend to move to a new phase which they describe, rather obviously, as a ‘focus on Britain’ rather than the party. Debates will be held for each of the six policy groups. There will be reports from some of the hundreds of participants in Oliver Letwin’s various teams. But it is becoming increasingly clear that the party’s best ideological scouts are among the Labour delegates who left Manchester on Thursday.

The governing party has not lost its ability to produce political ideas, but has lost the appetite to consume them. At this conference John Hutton, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said, in terms, that two-parent families are better than lone-parent arrangements. No serious attack on child poverty can ignore this stark truth, he added. His party was utterly unmoved. Alan Milburn spoke about the duty to consumerise public services as far as possible — anathema to the Chancellor, who proposes an independent NHS board precisely to ensure that there is no such reform. His party, tired of upheaval and still in hock to the public sector unions, nods its head.