By BAGEHOT
THE first thing that you notice in Birmingham is that the Conservative Party is hopelessly split on Brexit. The government is united (for now) over Chequers. Most of the party faithful hate it. On September 30th hundreds of people queued for more than an hour—the queue snaking down the stairs; people locked in animated conversations—to hear eight leading Brexiteers address a “conference rally” put on by a pro-Brexit website, Brexit Central. To burnish their “party within a party” credentials Brexit Central provided attendees with a purple ribbon to replace the regular blue ribbon issued by the Tory Party to hang the all-important conference passes on.