They’ve finally gone through the looking-glass – and even the BBC admits Tory conference-goers are living a fantasy.

In an article on the corporation’s website, BBC correspondents have marvelled at the unaccountably upbeat behaviour of people at the Birmingham event.

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It seems that, with most of the lobbyists having run off to the new Party of Government (Labour), grassroots Conservatives are enjoying unprecedented access to MPs – and are being plied with gifts from leadership candidates who are keen to woo them… or at least to give party members an idea of who they are.

Tory officials says a record number of activists have pitched up at this conference – and they are enjoying unprecedented access to senior figures, as the four leadership contenders woo and flatter them.

They are being plied with novelty merchandise, from foam fingers to fake tan, and are packing into the bars every night to debate the relative merits of the four contenders.

But here’s the downside:

There is no sense that the general public have caught Tory leadership fever. An Ipsos Mori poll suggests 64% of the public don’t care who wins, and very few have much awareness of who the candidates are.

One MP – a prominent supporter in public of one of the leading candidates – said: “I don’t understand why everyone is so excited.

“I think it’s mostly the members, not the MPs. The members seem to think this is 2005 but it’s pretty clear that none of the candidates are the new David Cameron.”

Another former minister expressed concern that all the smiles in Birmingham are sign of denial and delusion.

Another problem is that the Conservative Party is aging itself out of power altogether. Many of those who voted for the party this year won’t do it at the next election – if it is in five years’ time, the maximum length of a UK Parliamentary term – because they’ll have died of old age.

Currently the age at which most people vote Conservative has risen to 63; the party needs to find a way to attract younger members. But how can it when it has nothing to offer them?

And while there is a lot of schadenfreude at the woes currently being experienced by Keir Starmer and Labour, it ignores the fact that the current government is only falling foul of exactly the same traps as the Tories did over the last 14 years.

It’s easy to make jokes about cronyism and sleaze, and to punctuate speeches with punchlines about Starmer’s “expensive eyewear”, but those jokes are being made by people who had their faces in the same trough – in some cases for more than a decade.

And while Labour’s landslide majority is based on the fact that fewer voters turned out for July’s election, that doesn’t mean the Tories can expect a return to popularity at the ballot box next time; they would have to find a way to pry people away from Reform UK or even the Liberal Democrats – and that may prove an impossible task.

So it seems most likely that the current Tory euphoria is based on an illusion of renewal and on a (mistaken) belief that they can no longer be blamed for the problems facing the UK.

But the general public, outside the conference, have not forgotten that the problems being faced by Starmer’s Labour were caused by Conservatives – and are seeing no evidence of remorse from any of the leadership candidates.

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