The Tory conference tried desperately to pretend the party wasn’t consumed by Brexit

When the PM improbably declared that Tories ‘love Europe’, they seemed bemused – as if they suspected they were being tricked into something they feared they’d soon regret

MPs cheered lustily when Johnson vowed to ‘get Brexit done’ in his conference speech (PA)

Boris Johnson wanted two big messages to come out of the Conservative conference. First, that the Tories will sort Brexit out, and second that once it’s out of the way, they are just itching to focus all their attention on spending money on public services.

It was there in the weird portmanteau slogan plastered on every surface in Manchester: Get Brexit done: invest in our NHS, schools and police.

And it was there in speech after speech, as ministers treated the biggest and most disruptive constitutional change for generations as a pesky chore that needed to be done before they could get down to the real work of government.