It’s a cliche to report an air of unreality at the Conservative conference here in Birmingham. All party conferences are divorced from political reality, cut off from the rest of the country by steel fences and self-absorption. But this little bubble of self-referential noise feels even further away from normality than usual. Safe behind the fences and still, just about, comfortable in the familiar company of their colleagues and contacts, conference-goers (Tories and non-Tory visitors alike) risk failing to grasp just how much trouble the party, the government, and the country, are in.
Start with talk of a fresh austerity programme, trimming between £20 billion and £40 billion a year from public spending. Those are big numbers: they mean real, tangible cuts. They can’t be achieved by saving money on photocopier paper or sacking some civil servants. Lots of people in Birmingham are wondering where the Truss-Kwasi axis will try to make those cuts: welfare is getting a lot of chatter, not least because it’s a big-ticket item.
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