It takes a Mogg to see that these conference carry-ons are beyond a joke

The good news is the Tories are fighting back. The bad news is, they’re fighting each other. Over taxes and benefits, out in the open and (off the record) in language bluer than Suella Braverman’s ultramarine dress.

“What happened to your tax cut?” asked our ace reporter, Chris Hope. “Party members staged a coup,” she said. Do you mean Michael Gove? “Yeah.”

Poor Michael. No one trusts him. The fellow could get nailed to a cross and the crowd would say, “Very impressive, but what’s in it for him?”

If we must have these disagreements, wailed Dominic Green, can we not do it in private? Mr Green is well bred: he knows backs should only be stabbed behind closed doors.

Equally sensible is Jacob Reesmogg, who projects youth and sagacity, comedy and philosophy. There he was in the Institute of Economic Affairs tent in a blue-striped shirt, blue tie and what might be a new blue suit, with turn-ups at the feet.

Why the extra material? I suspect he’s still growing – for Jacob’s legs are so long that when he sits in a low chair, his knees nearly meet his chin, keeping him gangly and adolescent even as he matures into an elder Conservative statesmen.

The conversation was about regulation. Evidently, we need less of it – hear, hear! – and you can do your bit, said Jacob, by going to any shop that’s anti-sugar and moving the chocolate oranges nearer the tills. Do not imagine, however, that the Government favours some sort of “wild, far-right deregulatory snuff box”. We need minimum standards on, say, workplace machinery and child labour. “We don’t want children getting their hands cut off.”

Scrap every regulation, he warned, and you “might find children going up chimneys” – though if he could send his own “six children” up the chimney, it “might make a good income stream”.

There is a trampoline in the Mogg garden. He regrets ever having bought it. It is dangerous. Nevertheless, he can’t get the little Moggs off the damn thing, and though the thought of them bouncing off into the ether must keep him up at night, we have to permit risk.

This is why he wants to get rid of the package holiday directive. Have you all seen the film Carry On Abroad, he asked? Have we? Pull the other one, saucy, most of us can recite the script!

“Well, we’ve been watching the Carry On films with my children,” he continued, “because they are the right age to get the sense of humour” – and because “I’ve never left that age”, he enjoys them, too.

“What’s your favourite Carry On?”

I asked.

“Oh, I’m so politically incorrect,” he laughed. “Carry On Up the Khyber.i love that scene where they’re having dinner and they’re getting bombed.”

You can see the appeal: satire and sang-froid. Oh, for a party of Jacobs, men who know when to keep schtum. As for Mr Gove, if he has any sore misgivings, he should put some talcum powder on them.