The Sketch: Pampered pigs and antique firearms effortlessly upstage the lost leader

Right party, wrong members. Wrong MPs too, mainly. Certainly wrong leader. Apart from that things look pretty good for the Conservatives.

The Tory leader – political junkies will know who this refers to – continued the well trusted strategy of keeping his head down. The fellow has a masterly command of inconspicuousness. He appeared ("appeared" is perhaps too strong a word) at the farmers' market on the seafront. He spoke to a small crowd. The Country and Western band (composed of anarchists, pacifists, satirists and other malevolent lefties) had been playing a song, the chorus of which was "Ain't gonna study war no more". I'm surprised it's legal to sing a song like that in front of a Conservative leader. No police marksmen were there to stop them. The streets are basically out of control.

Fifteen feet away, no one could see the lost leader, or hear what he was saying. It was windy. His microphone didn't work. No one was interested. A number of phrases came through. I wrote them down, I don't know why. This is what they were: "Diverse craftsmen, destroyed commitment to, what's he saying? foot-and- mouth disease, hospitals, communities, I say in decency, can't hear, rising violence, children deserve, decent people do something, what is the priority, turn the mike on, I give you my pledge today, how ridiculous." That summed it up, we thought, how about you?

There was a stall advertising Pampered Pig. You could write a sketch about that. There was another stall called Antique Firearms. What was that doing at the Tory party?

Anything else? Oliver Letwin calculated that at the current rate of progress it will take New Labour 43 years to reach targets set by the Home Office. Tory pessimism plumbs new depth: shadow Home Secretary predicts New Labour in power for another four decades!

As everybody says, Mr Letwin is the Tories' most attractive performer (Ker-rikey, you ejaculate, but it is true). Mr Letwin has a new phrase. In the matter of criminals he's both Tough and Tender. From memory this is an early advertising line for Purdey's chicken: "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken." It sold a lot of chicken, whether it will sell a lot of Conservatism remains to be seen.

Finally we caught up with the radical new health policy. All hospitals are to be foundation hospitals with the power to borrow what they feel they need to run their affairs. What do you think of that? No, the fairies at the bottom of my garden are pretty sceptical too.

None of this has been thought through. Parliament will be hell. We have the prospect of yet another year of Tony Blair responding to every major proposition with his dead bat. It will all cost a lot of money, he'll say. "Money which we want to put into public services and which you want to take out." Nothing that has been said this week answers that fundamental, fraudulent accusation. Why not?

On the strength of this conference, the Tories are suffering from moral, emotional and intellectual incompetence. And the cure may be worse than the disease.

simoncarr75@hotmail.com