The Conservatives face the impossible task of winning over young people at conference

“Renewal is very hard to do when you’re in government,” one minister told me this week. It's no coincidence that the most electorally successful prime ministers of recent times, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, renewed and re-energised their parties when they enjoyed the time and space of opposition.

Jeremy Corbyn has undoubtedly revitalised Labour, as we saw in Brighton this week, making Theresa May’s task at the Conservative conference starting on Sunday even more difficult. It was already hard enough, as the party’s first gathering since the June election disaster. May has pre-empted the findings of an inquest into what went wrong by admitting to The House magazine that the Tory party machine was not geared up for a snap election. (Perhaps she should have checked before calling it). Officials told the inquiry that Conservative Campaign HQ was “hollowed out” between elections, and outgunned by Labour’s ground troops and social media operation, making the Tories dependent on consultants like the Australian Sir Lynton Crosby and Jim Messina, the former Barack Obama strategist.

Ministers will insist at the Manchester conference that they are learning lessons from the election. They are likely to unveil policies aimed at under-40s, on issues such as housing, to try to defuse a demographic time bomb that threatens the Tories’ long-term ability to forge a winning coalition. Labour was comfortably ahead among the under-45s in June, with 62 per cent of 18-24 year-olds backing the party, while 61 per cent of over 65s voted Tory.

The Conservatives don’t just have problem among voters. Although ministers will doubtless be surrounded by young faces for the cameras, the average age of a Tory party member is now 72. No wonder the Tories plan to set up a new youth movement.

The Tories need to refine their attacks on Labour. Older voters may remember the strikes of the 1978-79 winter of discontent but no one under 39 was even born then. Branding Corbyn an IRA sympathiser didn’t work in June either.

Love-bombing segments of voters will not be enough. The Tories may think Corbyn won the youth vote by promising to scrap university tuition fees, but Labour’s appeal went much wider and deeper than one “retail offer.” How can the Tories expect young adults to support capitalism when many have no prospect of having any capital, in the form of owning their home?

It is dawning on sensible Tories that Corbyn is winning the real battle – on values. Some admit privately that the centre of gravity has shifted leftwards, as the Labour leader argued in Brighton. There was further evidence today in research for the Legatum Institute suggesting that socialism is more popular than capitalism, which is viewed as “greedy”, “selfish” and “corrupt” by Tory as well as Labour voters – dangerous for a Tory party closely associated with it.

Labour’s renationalisation plans are more popular than free enterprise – even among Tory supporters (although they think austerity should continue). True, opinions do shift over time as the pendulum swings back and forth. But the Tories are on the wrong side of the line now.

May was right to go back to basics in her speech at the Bank of England on Thursday, when she admitted the sacrifices made by working people since 2008 had led some to “lose faith in free market capitalism.” But her ability to bring in the regulation needed is constrained by her lack of a Commons majority. The review of the gig economy by the former Blair aide Matthew Taylor seems to be gathering dust in Downing Street. May has watered down her original plans to put workers on boards and give shareholders an annual binding vote on executive pay. She is under pressure from 76 Tory MPs to reverse her decision to drop a cap on energy bills.

So much for tackling the worst excesses of capitalism. Perhaps May’s heart wasn’t in it before she lost her majority, and the clue to the Conservatives’ problem is in their name. Although the EU referendum showed that people are crying out for change, they were seen as the status quo party against Corbyn. The Tories may be incapable of reforming our institutions to ensure the system is fair.

In Manchester, May is likely to focus on the “burning injustice” of racism in Britain following a damning audit of the performance of public services for different ethnic groups. But the Tories’ hopes of switching the conference spotlight on to domestic policies is unlikely to work. Brexit will surely eclipse everything, with the risk that Cabinet disunity makes another unwelcome contrast with Labour. And Brexit will entrench the generational divide. Seven out of 10 young adults voted Remain, while the same proportion of over-65s backed Leave –that mirror image again.

The Tories have a lot to do to live up to their conference slogan of “building a country that works for everyone”. They could start by building enough houses, the best way to narrow the generation gap.