“We hate Tories, and we hate Tories / We hate Tories, and we hate Tories / We hate Tories, and we hate Tories / We are the Tory haters.”

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As a young Labour activist in the 1980s, I marched through Manchester and shouted out that song, and they were doing the same last Sunday. Same chant, same streets – and, as the Conservatives gathered for their conference, the thousands of people who came to protest suggested the exact same bundle of emotions: anger, defiance, and by the day’s end, a creeping sense of the futility of it all. For the next three days, moreover, an ugly show of that pointlessness was laid on by those who signalled their sense of defeat by getting as close as possible to any passing Conservatives and issuing the week’s ubiquitous insult: “Tory scum!”

Behind the security fences, the targets of all that fury were engaged in a pretty spectacular demonstration of power and how to use it. Yes, from tax credits to Europe, there are plenty of cruelties and possible calamities ahead. But make no mistake: thanks largely to the influence and insights of George Osborne, the Tories are speaking an appealing, modern language and gleefully seizing ground left vacant for them by the new Labour party.

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Any lefties who see this as some kind of a flimsy con trick would be well advised to read a publication from Compass, the leftist pressure group, titled The Osborne Supremacy. It characterises the chancellor’s Toryism as a truly hegemonic project, based on “a comprehensive political and intellectual strategy”.

If anything, that’s an understatement. Ken Spours, the author, explores the new Conservatives’ rising audacity and underlines how energised their politics has become now the shackles of coalition are off. Spours cites a passion among clued-up Tories for tech innovation (Uber and Airbnb, for instance) and more importantly a quest to steal political concepts like fairness, social justice and even equality from the left and “fill them with Conservative meaning”.

I read it in a moment of peace and quiet in Manchester, and it nailed what was afoot: a bid for lasting political dominance built on formidable foundations – not least, an updated version of the same populism that served the Conservatives so well in the Thatcher years (all about home ownership, keeping more of your own money, and the glories of hard graft). And when I got to the closing passages about the state of the left I felt a familiar pang of unease. My side of politics, Spours suggests, is in danger of forgetting two things: that “the road to power involves the careful building of economic, social and political alliances way beyond its comfort zone”; and that people on the left should engage with “how people see and interpret life now, and not just as you might want them to”.

Labour’s fixation on arcana amounts to political white noise: “people’s QE” is probably the best example

On Sunday, I spent time among the anti-Tory marchers and asked them if they understood why people voted for the enemy. Granted, a demonstration is not the ideal place for deep thought, but the replies were still depressing. Conservative supporters were “uneducated”, “selfish”, and “brainwashed”. It is strange, perhaps, to meet socialists with such a dim view of their fellow human beings, but there we are.

Meanwhile, in the real world, a critical mass of people perceive politics as a choice between a left – whether New Labour-ish or Corbynite – which seems arrogant devoid of any notion of belonging, and estranged from the daily grind, and a right that, for all its faults, has a hard-headed grasp of reality, a clear patriotism, and an understanding of the speed at which the world is changing. As happened in the 1980s, the latter crushes the former, with ease.

Which brings us to Labour’s conference last week, and a party and wider left that seems to be collapsing into a state of giddy denial. It was nigh-on impossible in Brighton to find anyone discussing why the party had just received two thumping election defeats. Worse still, the future barely intruded. The left’s new state of being, it seemed, is built on a political present reducible to Corbynmania and a glorious past that could somehow be revived, if only the masses understood how horrid their masters are. Over a week on, I am still at a loss to know what those four days at the seaside were meant to convey, beyond “look – Jeremy’s the leader”.

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Labour’s fixation on arcana amounts to political white noise: “people’s QE” is probably the best example. It seems to be falling for the idea that grandly moralising about this or that – austerity, mainly – is enough, but ignoring the fact that a politics that doesn’t speak to life in the social middle will fail at speed. Its sense of what’s important is in a bad place, exemplified by the quarrelling about nuclear weapons: a great moral cause, no doubt (I write as a lifelong member of CND), but perhaps not an issue ideally suited to beginning the long task of turning the public mood.

Yesterday came news of Corbyn’s alleged refusal to be ceremonially inducted into the privy council. The right-wing papers worked themselves into a frenzy; commentators on the left pointed out that Cameron had once put off the same occasion for three months, and speculated that Corbyn was on holiday. Politics is rarely fair, least of all for people on the left: but the problem for Labour was that the story chimed with an ongoing impression of leftie piety and topsy-turvy priorities, and again highlighted the vacuum where clarity, direction and speaking to the country ought to go.

The lack of those things was symbolised by the trade unionist who told the Corbyn rally in Manchester that the ascent of Saint Jeremy “almost makes you want to celebrate the fact Labour lost the election”. Elsewhere in the same city a spectacle unfolded that went beyond metaphor and felt like real politics, happening in real time. In the conference centre, the Conservatives were staking a claim to the future. Outside, the chants went: “We hate Tories.” We know that. What now?