Emerging images from the Conservative conference of desolate halls and frustrated delegates are a convenient visual metaphor for a party that has been intellectually hollowed out. Having defined its politics solely by “eliminating the deficit” for the past eight years — a task it has failed to complete despite inflicting the pain of relentless cuts to public spending — the Conservatives have apparently forgotten how to talk in any coherent manner about domestic issues.

While in subsequent years Labour responded to the financial crisis of 2008 with a process of renewal that was underpinned by an analysis of why capitalism was failing, the Conservative Party effectively dropped the entire proposed intellectual foundation of David Cameron’s leadership. Until the financial crisis, it was intended to be based on “Red Toryism”: more left-wing economic policies combined with social conservatism, but this agenda was abandoned in favor of exploiting the great crash of 2008 with an austerian narrative. Despite committing to match Labour’s spending plans in prior years, the Conservative Party after 2008 proceeded to lie to the British people, claiming that Labour had overspent and mismanagement of the public finances had caused the deficit.

The Conservative government, propped up by the Lib Dems, then proceeded to embark on a neo-Thatcherite journey of deregulation, corporate tax cuts, privatization, and shrinking of the state. So the very small state, low tax, and low regulation ideology that had exposed Britain to the financial crisis in the first place became the medicine the Conservative Party proposed to cure its ills, in place of any broader strategy to confront an economic system that was broken. Their denial was perpetuated by right-wing cheerleaders in the press, who regurgitated George Osborne’s lies about Labour overspending. As a result, the political conversation in Britain narrowed at precisely the moment a deeper analysis was required.