They might be out of power, but British Conservatives meeting at their annual conference this week were surprisingly upbeat, increasingly convinced they could take back power from the new Labour government sooner than they had previously thought.
With British Prime Minister Keir Starmer under fire over the use of donations and a move to limit winter fuel payments to pensioners, many Conservatives feel they can bounce back quickly after suffering their worst election defeat in July.
It is a marked shift from the immediate aftermath of the election, when Labour won a landslide victory in an election that even Conservatives say was a whole-hearted rejection of their often chaotic and scandal-ridden 14 years in power.
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