Can we look forward to a great Tory bust-up and thunderbolt at their conference in Birmingham this week? Or will things start to simmer down, just as the pot looks like boiling over?

For once, it can be said without exaggeration that this is the most critical conference the Conservatives have held for decades.

Boris Johnson, former Foreign Secretary, can scarcely intensify the already savage language he has used about the Prime Minister’s Chequers proposals for Brexit, without actually challenging her leadership.

May, to her credit, has remained firm, denouncing her critics for playing with politics to the detriment of the UK.

Meanwhile, the big and unreachable electoral advantage Jeremy Corbyn possesses over the Prime Minister is that he has achieved a pop-star-like adulation, while she has not and never will.

The youthful enthusiasm for Corbyn, which so alarmed the Tories at last year’s unnecessary general election, has not waned at all. Young and old alike chanted, “Oooh! Jeremy Corbyn”, at regular intervals during last week’s Labour conference.

The Conservatives have good reason to be worried. They can produce the most attractive policies in the world and verbally destroy Labour’s policies, but none of that will defeat the pro-Corbyn hysteria, which has swept through the party and beyond.

Labour has successfully marshalled the youth vote - something no other party has bothered to do - and are reaping the dividends with Corbyn as their unlikely pin-up.

Whoever predicted that Corbynmania would ever happen at all, never mind becoming a source of such deep concern to the Tories?

Thank goodness for the Monster Raving Loony Party. While bad temper has abounded in the political world over the past week or so, the Loonies have been holding their own cheerful and wacky conference in Belper, Derbyshire.

One feature about this organisation - which is a fully registered political party - is that there is no back-stabbing, no fury, and no internecine warfare.

While all the others are tearing themselves apart, the Monster Raving Loony Party quietly gets on with it. Belper, which claims more pubs than any other town of its size in the country, used to be the constituency of the late George Brown, the regularly tipsy Foreign Secretary under Harold Wilson.

Among the new policy suggestions before the Loonies conference last week were these gems: Mega car wash will be created by punching holes in the roof of the Channel Tunnel; OAPS will qualify for a Summer Ice Lolly Allowance if temperatures exceed 70 degrees; Puddles deeper than three inches will be marked by a yellow plastic duck; Terrorists will be made to wear bells and horns so we know where they are; Unruly teenagers will be superglued together as if you can’t beat them, join them.

Their manifesto, when it comes out, certainly promises to be a more enjoyable read than any of the others. And they have remained faithful to their long-standing mantra: ‘Vote for Insanity - you know it makes sense.’

Long live the Loonies!