Swift celebrates a triumphant final day for Kemi Badenoch in Manchester

Emerging on to the main stage was a vision in white. Was Kemi Badenoch having another wedding? Is she going to play an angel in the NW Essex (such a romantic constituency name!) Christmas Pageant? Had she signed up as a nurse to save the NHS?

The wedding would have been the best guess. Badenoch had decided to marry the Conservative Party and that was just fine, because it - or at least its representatives in the hall - were about to fall in love with her.

She made all the romantic noises that set Tory hearts a-flutter. There was patriotism, economic realism, spending cuts, civil service culls, immigration controls, cheaper energy, and a driving narrative of bold ideas to meet fundamental challenges. 

But this was a speech which was much more than the sum of its parts. Swift has heard Kemi speak live quite a few times in the past (including in Manchester earlier in the week). She’s been competent, a bit boring, inclined to miss opportunities to generate real excitement. pretty much like Keir Starmer, in fact.

This was different. A woman transformed. Who was this smiling, joking, passionate orator who landed every joke, generated several absolutely deserved standing ovations, and had the audience in raptures. Goodness knows what they put in the water in Manchester, but it clearly works. As a certain local band put it, she’s electric.

Core policies weren’t read out like items from her weekly shopping list they were spat out like a machine gun. The accusation that the party was an ideas-free zone no longer has any credibility. And of course she teased her way brilliantly to a big reveal: the complete abolition of Stamp Duty. A tax reform which combines three great virtues: it is affordable, it is economically sensible, and it is politically attractive.

The audience flung themselves in adoration at her feet (metaphorically, of course, as not all of them could have got up again unaided. It’s the knees, you know).

Yet Swift is a realist. The old days when party conference speeches were seismic events have gone. Where there is no vision, the people perish is true - but are they listening? Conservatives now have to bore the nation with stamp duty abolition, the five grand for new employees, and the abolition of business rates for High Street pubs and shops. Every potential voter needs to be utterly sick of hearing about these policies.

With one speech the leader has put the plotters on the back foot, grabbed the headlines, and given party activists something to talk about when campaigning. It would be far too optimistic to say the Conservative revival is underway, but you know what they say about every journey, and this was a big first step.