From Jeremy Paxman in Manchester
Greetings from the railways sheds which once housed the Manchester end of the St Pancras railway line. The city has an unfortunate history when it comes to politicians and railways. When William Huskisson attended the opening of the Manchester/Liverpool railway in 1830, he was so keen to have a quick word with the Duke of Wellington that he stepped on to the track, failing to notice Stephenson's Rocket was coming down the line. That was the end of his political ambitions.
No-one has yet been similarly mangled here this week, although Ken Clarke - the closest thing the Conservative Party has to a human version of the Rocket - did have a try at flattening Peter Mandelson this afternoon.
The Tory conference still has two more days of what are comically called 'debates' to run. It's hard to know what name to give the succession of speeches resounding around the old railway sheds here. But debate is definitely not
le mot juste. The closest we've got to dissent was Boris Johnson's appearance here yesterday, and if you were watching
last night you'll know he's not exactly what you'd call a faint heart when it comes to cheerleading for David Cameron.
A teenage girl strongly resembling Violet Elizabeth Bott did get her three minutes of preternaturally grown-up rhetoric this morning, reminiscent of the young William Hague after gender reassignment. For the rest, there has hardly been single word of dissent in the hall on any subject, even on issues which we know split the party from top to toe, like Europe. It is politics reduced to a choice of various flavours of chocolate. No, scrub that, it's all the same flavour of chocolate.
The thing finishes on Thursday, when the stage is torn down, because there's hardly any time to put up the set for the next convention here, which is an enormous display of beauty products, apparently. Too delicious to imagine what might happen if the two events overlapped.
The speech of the day was George Osborne on the economy. He walked on to the stage all furrowed brow and portentousness, desperate to live down the Boy George jibe. It didn't lighten up (although it did have one good joke: "What does it say about Gordon Brown that he got into a trial of strength with Alistair Darling. And lost.")
It was one of the cleverest political speeches many of us have seen, eschewing the usual facile promises, and full of doom and gloom about the mess we're in. The party has evidently decided that everyone appreciates the sickness in the public finances, and is willing to take the medicine necessary to begin a cure: pay freezes, public sector pension cuts and an end to various benefits. He also came up with a slogan which may just work: "We're all in this together", which he repeated time and again.
We can now see clearly what the Tories plan to do to try to bring about the first change of government since Blair swept to power 12 years ago, and on tonight's show we're going first to anatomise it, and then to ask whether it can work.
Our chief guest is the shadow home secretary Chris Grayling, whose meteoric rise to the top of the party testifies to the way he's regarded. Then we'll have a number of others, including Danny Finkelstein, often tipped to run the Downing Street Policy Unit if Cameron ever gets the tenancy.
Searing analysis from Crick and Grossman, it goes without saying, of course.
Oh, and Gavin gets to go to find out who's won the Man Booker Prize.
10.30pm on BBC Two. What would you rather be doing?
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