The 2026 Conservative conference is big enough to justify using Birmingham's Symphony Hall as its main stage again. So, Kemi Badenoch will tread the same stage ageing rockers Marillion took last month - and where sequinned soprano Katherine Jenkins will perform next week. She'll also avoid the humiliation of a national party leader being squashed into a side room at a corporate conference centre (with drapes portioning off the empty space).
Simply, the party is able to put bums on seats again - and by that measure, things are looking up. Badenoch goes into the conference with her own position secure in the party. One senior Tory says "she has actually defied cynics like me" who initially disapproved of her leadership.
Her standing with the public has improved and she is now, again on a very simple but crucial measure, much better known. Her allies are sure she has developed a clear identity among the public, confiding: "People now know who she is and they enjoy her interventions - the thing we hear most is I don't always agree with her but I know where she stands." But Conservative MPs are aware that the party itself still has a much bigger issue - in the words of one shadow cabinet member: "The problem we still have is trust of the party and the brand". The shadow of the years of chaos still looms.
And while Badenoch has made good progress since she took the job, most of that was up against an unpopular prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, on whom she landed plenty of political punches. She has to show "what being Conservative is now", says another senior Tory, taking on a different, more popular, rival in Andy Burnham. The Tories' warm-up to conference has been so far, so traditional.
A proposed dramatic expansion of prison places kicks off Badenoch's second big party get-together. With it, a message that echoes the well-known mantra of the early 1990s Tories, issued by former leader Michael Howard at party conference: "Prison works". They are not just talking about adding on a few cells here and there, but spelling out a monumental increase in the numbers of people that the country locks up.
That follows the announcement of a new "tough love" approach for young people trying to claim benefits. Don't expect the shadow work and pensions secretary, Helen Whateley, to produce a moment as controversial as when the then-welfare secretary, Peter Lilley, proclaimed from the stage that he had "a little list" of benefit claimants he wanted to root out. But the Conservatives are determined to keep concentrating on the size of the welfare bill – believing it's right to do so for financial and moral reasons.
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