So, Conference season has come to a close with the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester and, truth be told, this really was a case of last and least.

Having been to almost every Conservative Party Conference over the past decade, this was a scaled back affair, to say the very least. The exhibition hall was padded out with seating areas, and traditionally big venues such as those of think tank CPS and publisher ConHome tents had been moved into the exhibition hall to try and mask the fact that there far fewer stalls this year – a sign that business participant numbers had dwindled. It didn’t work. But then there were far fewer people too.

On Sunday numbers were alarmingly low and while they did pick up a little on Monday, pictures of the queue to get in were misleading as arrivals were steered through a single entrance staffed by some very ponderous and officious security staff. There is no doubt that for corporates and Conservative Party members alike, there was little to draw them to Conference this year.

That might in part be because the model of Party Conferences itself is fundamentally flawed in the age of social media. People don’t want to sit in half-empty rooms listening to pre-prepared speeches which have already been trailed in the media. And most people can’t relate to policy debates led by think-tankers who used to be at the heart of Governments that failed to deliver the policies they now espouse.

As I walked back to my hotel down Oxford Road in central Manchester, I looked at the students making their way to Manchester Metropolitan Uni, the homeless people on the steps of the Palace Theatre, the businesspeople drinking coffee while talking earnestly on their phones, and the shopkeepers plying their wares. None of the discussions that were taking place a couple of hundred yards up the road have any meaningful bearing on them and their lives. And none of them have even the slightest interest in what politicians think or believe in – something that to date only Reform UK seem to have grasped, and responded to.

This, of course, is something that was as much in evidence during the Lib Dem Conference in Bournemouth and the Labour Conference in Liverpool, as it was here.  Back in Manchester Central, while there was some contrition in some circles over the failures of recent Conservative Governments, there was still a clear ‘head-in-the-sand’ stubborn certainty that voters will come back to the Tories eventually. “They always do, don’t they?”.

There was praise for the ham-fisted new policy offerings. Kemi has pledged to leave the ECHR as part of an immigration policy that reads almost word-for-word the same as Reform UK’s. She is also going to abolish that most unpopular of taxes, Stamp Duty. Mel Stride has pledged public spending cuts amounting to £47bn – this from the party that raised public debt from 64% of GDP to around 96% of GDP in just 14 years. Robert Jenrick, the Conservatives’ latest great hope for the future says he will sack the same judges so empowered by the previous Conservative Government.

But these policies on their own will not win back voters for the Conservative Party. Not because they aren’t, in and of themselves, good policies. That’s irrelevant now. The problem is that no-one is listening to the Conservatives anymore. Not even their own members judging by the footfall here. Given the low expectations, Kemi Badenoch will leave Manchester feeling buoyed by what has to be perceived as a successful conference, which strengthens her position as party leader, at least for a while (and at least until the forthcoming local, Welsh Senedd and Scottish Parliament elections in May). But nothing will change in the polls or in the Tories electoral prospects as a result of what happened here.

One thing that was omni-present at this Conference was Margaret Thatcher as the Tories celebrated her 100^th birthday. There was a Maggie mosaic, Maggie merch, Maggie books and cut-outs, even a surprisingly sparsely attended Maggie Birthday party (£20 for one beer and a chance to hear Kemi compare herself to Maggie for 15 minutes).

Thatcher was a politician of conviction who wasn’t afraid to upset people to do the right thing and deliver the sweeping change that was needed to fix the broken country she inherited. The current Tory party lacks all of those qualities and the shadow of Thatcher now looms over the Party. She left office 34 years ago and sometimes it feels like the party still hasn’t moved on – apart from when it was actually in power of course and governed very differently indeed.

Are there any positives to emerge from this Conference? Well, possibly. While it was quiet, many people, including me, expected it to be worse. In the likes of Robert Jenrick and Claire Coutinho, the Tories do have a new generation of polished professional politicians who can enunciate policy clearly and with humour, and get their message across. And there is every chance Reform will shoot themselves in the foot more than a few times ahead of the next General Election.

Will that be enough for the Conservatives to win the next election? It seems doubtful on this showing and while the right remains divided. Will it be enough for the Conservatives to remain a significant political force? Possibly. But only if the party can get people to listen again, and there was no sign of that here.