Badenoch enjoys her first, and probably last, Tory conference leader's speech

"Her first and almost certainly her last. Half her membership want her gone now. The other half are happy to give her until next year. But just for this hour, all hostilities were to be forgiven. No matter that this conference had been dead on arrival. A celebration of annihilation. This was to be a remembrance of times past. A collective narcosis. The Tories' very own Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. A parallel universe where Kemi held the country in her hands."

"Keeping everyone's expectations subterranean. A panel in which a mayoral candidate declared that she had got her party back. Really? Was existential futility what she wanted? A group therapy session in which Alex Burghart supposedly one of the brains of the Tory party spoke of his love for flags in the marching season in Northern Ireland. Clearly a man who misses the Troubles."

"And to be fair, Kemi didn't let them down. Her speech was adequate. Which, by the standards of the past few days, could be considered a triumph. Better than anyone could have hoped for. She sounded confident. Though it was hard to know whether this was because she has reconciled herself to the inevitable or if she is so divorced from reality that she took the war"

Kemi Badenoch delivered a ceremonious address at a moribund Conservative conference that functioned as a farewell spectacle. Delegates had mixed views of her leadership, with half wanting her removed and half tolerating her until later, yet the audience gave repeated standing ovations and chants. Organisers kept proceedings low-key and expectations deliberately minimal, while side events included a mayoral claim of party recovery and one participant who praised marching-season flags. The speech appeared confident but potentially detached from reality. The overall tone combined nostalgia, performative celebration, and a sense of impending party collapse.

Read at www.theguardian.com