The Conservative Party has united behind Kemi Badenoch. Every MP has confirmed their loyalty. The rest of the country has confirmed it has never heard of the loyalty.
The opinion polls remain stubborn. Labour is ahead. Reform is ahead. The Tories are somewhere below both, in the position a man occupies at a wedding when he has come as the plus-one of someone who has already left.
One Conservative source described the mood as ‘resolute’. Resolute is what you call a party that has checked the polling and decided to frame it as a personal attack on the pollsters.
The party’s internal message is that Badenoch has the backing of the membership. The membership is, by any reasonable measure, the only audience still in the room. It is a very attentive room. It applauds everything.
Asked why voters outside the echo chamber are not joining the enthusiasm, a spokesperson said the party ‘must keep talking to people’. Keep talking to people is what you say when the people have stopped answering the door and you are standing on the step, still holding the leaflets.
The Labour and Reform voters, for their part, appear entirely content in their relationships. They have not been asked to switch. Nobody has even sent a text.
The Tories have full confidence in their leader. Their leader has full confidence in her party. Somewhere in a constituency, a voter is reading the headline, shrugging, and asking who is actually in charge of the country.