At the mausoleum that is this week’s Conservative party conference one of the bodies has just shown a slight muscular twitch. Kemi Badenoch will this morning try to reclaim the one subject on which the Tories can reasonably hope to base a revival: fiscal responsibility. Mel Stride has already proposed £47 billion worth of spending cuts. His boss will now announce a ‘golden rule’ whereby half the proceeds of those cuts will go to reducing the deficit rather than on tax cuts.

I know that for the Tories to try to make a thing of fiscal responsibility is a bit rich given that public spending was allowed to balloon out of control during the latter years of the last Conservative government. Even the supposedly small-state Liz Truss strangely shy about contemplating spending cuts to go with her

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