Andrew Gimson is a contributing editor to ConservativeHome and the author of "Boris - the Rise of Boris Johnson". He was the Daily Telegraph's parliamentary sketchwriter, and before that the paper's Berlin correspondent.
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A Conservative MP who has seen much of Collins says: “I like him. He’s more intelligent and thoughtful than his public manner gives one to expect.”
She said the bare minimum on Brexit and Corbyn has no idea how to get anything more out of her.
Theresa May has mastered all the necessary pieties and used them to bludgeon her opponents into submission.
The former Foreign Secretary says May’s team are inexperienced in EU negotiations and are “pushing out disinformation”.
A new book, White Flag?, tries to sound the alarm. Will anyone listen?
The only excitement was provided by the Attorney-General, who did a warm-up act in which he looked like Rumpole auditioning to be Henry V.
He raised his listeners’ spirits in a way that no other speaker at this tepid and uncertain conference has managed.
The Home Secretary also spoke of the vital need to fix the housing crisis.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer dared to be dull as he set out the economic facts of life and stuck to the Chequers plan.
The Defence Secretary outlined a programme of national self-assertion from Ukraine to the South China Sea.
But he also managed to compare the European Union to the Soviet Union.
The party must move on from Brexit – and focus on boosting social mobility.
Because the Chancellor’s coalition its riven by internal disputes, she has lost the authority to knock heads together on Brexit.
In his new book,Richard Ritchie tells the story of the Progress Trust, an influential group of Tory backbenchers set up during the Second World War.
This symbol to some of a self-righteous metropolitan elite is, in her way, a populist, who knows that her strength lies in reaching out to the people.