Conservative governments have a habit of self-destructing: they die not in battle with political enemies but as a result of vicious infighting. It’s been less than three years since Boris Johnson’s triumphant 80-seat election victory, which seemed at the time to come close to condemning Labour to oblivion. Yet this week in Birmingham it was the Conservatives who have looked doomed, posing a far greater threat to each other than to Keir Starmer.

In her conference speech, Liz Truss laid out a confident and coherent agenda. She is correct about the need to harness the power of free enterprise to kickstart growth, but she failed to prepare the ground for her agenda. Since entering No. 10, she has consistently failed to make her case before implementing policy, baffling even her allies with plans to spend an extra £10 billion a month subsidising fuel bills, and borrowing an extra £70 billion to pay for it. How does this all add up? The answer, we’re told, will come in a few weeks. It has been a case study on how not to sell a reform programme.

The Chancellor’s mini-Budget was so botched, so badly explained, that important points have been missed. No one would guess from the murderous mood in Birmingham that the pound is one of the few currencies to have risen against the dollar in the days since Kwarteng delivered his tax-cut plans. The markets, it seems, have performed their own U-turn. UK borrowing rates have fallen from recent highs. The Bank of England set aside £65 billion to deal with companies that may fall down – but so far only £4 billion of that has been used.

The economic situation is bad, but it’s not nearly as calamitous as one might expect from the feuding and loathing in the Tory conference. The NIESR, an economic forecaster, normally hostile to Conservative reforms, expects 2 per cent growth next year – up from the 0.5 per cent it had predicted. If this comes to pass (and other forecasters are not so optimistic), it would be a far cry from the recession the Bank of England had expected. It might even look like a Truss success.

Her diagnosis of Britain’s economic malaise is also correct: a lamentable failure to increase productivity since the financial crash has caused living standards to stagnate. It is not a case – as Labour would have it – of senior management living it up at the expense of ordinary workers. Those who have been doing well are those who have assets which have been pumped up to artificially high values. The best-paid 1 per cent contribute 28 per cent of all income tax. Meanwhile, the real economy hasn’t been growing at anything like the rate it did before 2008.

The government is quite right that it will require radical measures to correct this, but patience is needed. Greater incentives are required to persuade people who have left the workforce to come back, to work more hours if they are already in work, to set up businesses and attract entrepreneurial talent from beyond our shores. Take the over-fifties: some 300,000 have not returned to work after lockdowns. What can be done to incentivise these skilled middle-aged workers?

The greatest untapped natural resource in Britain is not shale gas but the talents of the five million currently being kept on out-of-work benefits. In a country with 1.3 million vacancies, there are 1.3 million missed opportunities. The right reforms made by Chloe Smith, the new Work and Pensions Secretary, could boost lives – as well as the UK’s economic prospects.

Too often governments have embarked on a ‘bonfire of red tape’ only to give up straight away when they find out how popular overregulation is with large, established businesses who want to keep disruptors from eating their lunch. If this government can get beyond that stage and avoid pandering to vested interests, it might well succeed in getting economic growth out of second gear.

None of this will happen if Conservative MPs continue their infighting, as they did at conference this week. Keep it up and the chances of victory at the next election will go from slim to none. No one is asking for Truss to be given an extended honeymoon, but she was barely allowed a moment to breathe before colleagues turned on her.

Repeated leadership elections have destroyed the traditional Conservative virtue of loyalty. This year’s race seems to have led to aggrieved bands of MPs who are intent on revenge – either because they were forced out of government, passed over for promotion or their preferred candidate did not prevail. It is no doubt causing problems that the MPs’ choice of candidate, Rishi Sunak, was not selected by Conservative members. But if MPs undermine their party members’ choice of leader, they will break down trust within the party even further.

Leadership alternatives were discussed this week behind closed doors in Birmingham: a Boris restoration, Rishi by Christmas, even a Kit Malthouse compromise. But to consider these options is to realise how absurd they are. Truss and Kwarteng have had a poor start, but their ideas and principles are not wrong. They are the only option the Tory party has left – and Tory MPs must decide whether to work with or against them.