THE theme of this year’s Conservative Party conference in Birmingham was “opportunity”. In normal times it would be political death for a speaker to make fun of his party’s slogan. But these are not normal times. Ross Thompson, the MP for Aberdeen South, told a rally of Brexiteers that he couldn’t look at one of the ubiquitous “opportunity” signs without wanting to add a few modifiers, such as “missed”, “lost”, “wasted” and squandered”. They roared with approval.

The Birmingham conference was in fact two events rolled into one: the annual meeting of the Conservative Party and a reunion of the pro-Brexit movement. The party conference had a North Korean feel. Tory dignitaries delivered wooden speeches. “Real people” testified about the party’s wisdom. Well-scrubbed functionaries gave out stickers proclaiming “the best Brexit deal”. The rally, by contrast, felt like something out of the French revolution. The crowds erupted with cries of “Sack the woman!” and “Traitors!”—and only just stopped short of chanting “Lock her up”.

Brexit’s true believers like to say that they made a great mistake in assuming that winning the referendum meant winning the war; that they wound up their operation while the other side kept campaigning. This is a dubious claim. BrexitCentral, a website run by former Vote Leave staffers, has continued to publish since referendum day. Either way, the movement is certainly back. Leave Means Leave, another campaigning outfit, is deploying all its old tricks: a battle bus, mass rallies and snappy slogans (“No deal, no problem”).

The movement’s biggest star is Boris Johnson. In Birmingham people queued for three hours to listen to the former foreign secretary dismissing Theresa May’s Brexit plan as a national humiliation. Its most ubiquitous spokesman is Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was mobbed wherever he went. Mr Rees-Mogg has established a unique position in the movement, more trusted by true believers than Mr Johnson, but also more respected by Mrs May’s team (“Jacob plays chess while Boris only plays chequers,” says one). The Brexit firmament extended beyond Old Etonians. Priti Patel, the MP for Witham in Essex, and Andrea Jenkyns, MP for Morley and Outwood in Yorkshire, were also everywhere. Ms Jenkyns became a Brexit hero when she asked Mrs May in Parliament “at what point it was decided that Brexit means Remain”.

The hard core are Manicheans. They believe the world is divided between the people (who are both virtuous and wise) and the powerful (who are so clever they are stupid). Daniel Hannan, an MEP, says that Remainers who predicted that Brexit would lead to economic disaster are like members of a doomsday cult, constantly revising the date of the apocalypse. Mr Rees-Mogg likens the British people to Gulliver and the establishment to Lilliputians who are determined to tie him down.

The Brexiteers regard referendum day as Britain’s greatest moment since the second world war. But they are convinced that their great achievement is about to be betrayed. Theresa May promised what amounted to a hard Brexit in her Lancaster House speech last year. More than 80% of the electorate voted for parties that supported Brexit in the election of 2017. But now the prime minister has been got at. Senior civil servants have poured honeyed words into her ear. Eurocrats have worn her down. Traitors such as Michael Gove have put their own careers above the true faith. The resulting compromise that she proposes will be the worst of all worlds—out of Europe but still run by Europe. There is an even bigger threat on the horizon: a second referendum that will be rigged to ensure the elite gets its way. Sir Nick Clegg, a former deputy prime minister, has already floated the idea of giving young people two votes each. One Tory confided in Bagehot that there was an even more dastardly scheme in the works, to limit the franchise to university graduates.

Does any of this fire and brimstone matter? One possibility is that the ultras are making so much noise precisely because they have lost the war. Most Tory MPs regard them as nutters. Mrs May is determined to stick to her Brexit plan. And the party is in no mood for a leadership fight in the middle of the negotiations.

Taking over the asylum

Yet the depressing truth is that it does matter. The hard-core Brexiteers exercise a gravitational pull on the party. They persuade otherwise sensible politicians to speak in tongues. Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, delighted them (and appalled his fellow foreign ministers) by likening the EU to the Soviet Union. They dominate local selection committees. Anna Soubry says that Remainers like her would not get a seat these days. They embolden potential rebels. Spotting a whip taking notes at a meeting of Brexit ultras, Owen Paterson, another MP, told him that he intended to vote against the government’s Brexit deal. One reason Mrs May’s premiership has been so troubled is that she started it by playing to the Brexit gallery, beginning exit negotiations before she had a plan and drawing red lines that have limited Britain’s options.

The hard-core Brexiteers are yet more evidence of an ugly turn in British politics towards tub-thumping, no-holds-barred populism. The similarities between the Brexiteers who gathered in Birmingham and the Corbynites who gathered in Liverpool the week before are striking. There is the same insistence that “we are the mainstream”. There is the same hunt for traitors to hang. There is the same hijacking of party democracy: wealthy Leave-backers are trying to get Remainer Tory MPs deselected, putting up posters in their constituencies saying “Make the Conservatives Conservative again”. There is even the same insistence that there will be blood on the streets if the people’s will is thwarted. Debating the pros and cons of having a referendum, David Cameron quoted Shakespeare’s warning against “unleashing demons of which ye know not”. The demons have been unleashed and on both the left and the right they are on the prowl.