THE Conservative Party conference must be a strange place to be with a version of reality all of its own.

Yesterday, Liz Truss, Prime Minister for 45 days, made an appearance on stage and didn’t apologise for her part in the party’s historic defeat, blaming everyone but herself for her own downfall, and then saying she would have done better than Rishi Sunak in the election.

Ms Truss, famously outlasted by a lettuce, has a brass neck. Can she really not see that her chaotic failings, after the shambles of the Boris Johnson era, convinced the country that the Tories were not competent any more? After her disastrous time in office, with the markets collapsing, the party could only turn to Mr Sunak, a managerial details fellow within a big political vision, in a desperate bid to stabilise and restore faith.

Next up was leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch, who came shooting from the hip and blaming everyone but herself for her latest bout of headlines over her views on maternity pay. In an interview about business regulation, she did appear to say that maternity pay was “excessive”, and then blamed everyone else for misinterpreting her.

Why can’t politicians accept that they might occasionally mis-speak, and apologise, rather than always be on the self-righteous attack?

Like Ms Truss, Ms Badenoch likes to think of herself as a free-thinker prepared to say what others dare not. She likes to play with matches in a room full of petrol cans.

Having seen their brand so badly damaged by Ms Truss, the Tories aren’t really going to choose another volatile leader as a reaction to Mr Sunak’s unsuccessful attempts to restore stability?