Corbyn's presence has seeped into almost every discussion at the conference, powered by a fear among Tory activists and politicians that there is generational time bomb under their support base, which is about to explode.

Although the party's finances remain in good health, the Tories' paid party membership is speculated to be as low as 100,000 people – a sixth of the size of Labour and possibly even smaller than the Lib Dems – with an average age of 71, according to the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg. The party has been left in the unusual position of winning almost 14 million votes even as its activist base, to put it bluntly, is dying.

Meanwhile, there's the structural issue that increasing numbers of young people – defined by one Conservative speaker as anyone under the age of 45 – are likely to be worse off than their parents' generation. As a result, people who are wanting to settle down and buy a house – a natural moment to recruit people to the Tory cause – are finding themselves unable to afford a place to live.

"We are at a turning point in our party’s history," insisted Philip Lee, one of the MPs who believes Corbyn's surge shows the Conservatives are staring into the abyss.

"Our whole focus must be on the next generation and present a vision for the 2050s and 2060s. Our economy, society, and our politics are currently structured to benefit over-60s not under-40s."

The problem is that, unlike at Labour's conference, identifiable young activists are thin on the ground in Manchester. The party doesn't even have an active youth wing after its previous scandal-hit organisation for young members was shut down amid bullying allegations following the death of a young activist.

The modern equivalent of the young centre-right activists who were attracted to the party under David Cameron are less likely to be supporters of Brexit. Fringe events on winning back young voters were packed but often by people with grey hair.



Chancellor Philip Hammond decided to take the ideological approach to tackling Labour, using his conference speech to defend free market capitalism while berating Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell as "dinosaurs" who wanted to take the British economy back to the "ideological experiments" of the 1970s.

Another generation of Conservative MPs – often those who first stood for the party under David Cameron's leadership and voted Remain in the EU referendum – are taking a different approach, engaging with Corbyn's analysis and trying to find distinctly Tory solutions.

They fear Corbyn's "primary colours" approach to policy, where the Labour leader can pledge radical and easily understandable action on issues, such as completely abolishing tuition fees, is fundamentally more attractive to the electorate than tinkering around the edges of policy.

"At no other time in humanity has wealth gone from young to old," said Tom Tugendhat MP, the new chairman of the foreign affairs select committee. "We’ve got to look at taxing of assets in different ways."



The problem for Conservatives who want radical change is that it's very difficult for them to be more radical than the Labour leader on many key issues, without compromising their belief in the power of free markets and fiscal prudence.

There's also a frustration among Tory activists – who by default believe Conservative policies can be used to solve issues such as the housing crisis – that the debate is still focused on denigrating Corbyn, when it could take action to fix the problems in society.



"Some people would think the Conservative party was a think tank responding to Corbyn's speech," said David Skelton of Renewal, an organisation that aims to build a working-class Conservative movement. "It's actually a government with the power to change things, such as housing."

What's harder for some Tory MPs to take is the sense among a growing swath of voters that the Conservatives are not just wrong but actively evil, fuelled by the rise of online news outlets circumventing traditional pro-Conservative media outlets.



"Our opponents have successfully managed to portray us as people who are in it for money, power, the wrong reasons," said George Freeman MP.

Other Tory MPs have been left similarly bruised by the sense that they are perceived as the bad guys when compared with Corbyn.

"We know that young people are suffering a lot of anxiety about their place in the world, but nobody believes us when we say we’re committed to improving mental health care in this country," said James Morris, a Conservative MP who has long campaigned for the issue to be treated the same as physical health.



He said technocratic Conservative policy announcements, which promise small pots of money here and there to partially improve certain services, are neither having the desired effect nor convincing the public that the Tories genuinely care about solving big challenges.

"Incrementalism in policy is no longer sufficient," he said. "We need to change the system, get away from incrementalism, and be bold in what we’re trying to achieve."

Not everyone is on board with this plan. Events featuring the traditionalist Jacob Rees-Mogg were packed, while some Tory aides suggested the panic is overblown given the Conservatives are still neck-and-neck in opinion polls with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour, despite everything that has gone wrong for the party. The problem is, it could still get worse.

Mark Wallace of the activist blog ConservativeHome said there were two responses within the party to Corbyn's unexpected popularity.

"What I find quite interesting is I’ve come across a lot of party members who are taking it as a wake-up call to crack on with new, radical ideas and reform of their own party. It’s also the case that people are taking this as a chance to engage with Jeremy Corbyn on his own battleground."

But it's not all clear cut.

“I’ve heard more than a few people say that you can’t out-Corbyn Corbyn," he said, referring to Theresa May's pledge not to raise tuition fees above £9,250 a year in a bid to win back young voters, which did little more than remind young voters that tuition fees are £9,250.

"It’s about how you develop a distinctive Conservative response."