Kemi Badenoch is a happy warrior. In her speech in Birmingham she poured exuberant scorn on Andy Burnham’s “make believe” – “stop faffing about!” – and on Nigel Farage: “We are not uniting with that!”

Anyone who supposed it might be possible to arrange a marriage of convenience between Badenoch and Farage should abandon hope after this expression of invincible disgust.

Nor is she attracted by his “fishy” money: “Has anyone here received a five million pound gift? I haven’t.”

Badenoch’s eyes flashed with anger as she ran through the disreputable things said by Reform MPs, which include casting doubt on “whether my mixed-race children are English”. She added in a buoyant but implacable tone, “I don’t know whether you’ve noticed but I am black. I am British.”

Ferocious mockery, directed at the fatuities peddled by the fools who lead the other parties, comes naturally to Badenoch.

Her conference speech was delivered in the spirit of Gwendolen Fairfax, in The Importance of Being Earnest: “On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one’s mind. It becomes a pleasure.”

Badenoch makes politics tremendously enjoyable for Conservatives. They gave her such long and loud applause, and rose to their feet so often, that the journalist sitting next to me complained he was never going to get his lunch.

She can invest even unremarkable observations with colour and feeling: “If we want peace we must prepare for war.”

And she is always ready with mischievous glee to ridicule the inadequate measures offered by the former Mayor of Manchester: “If Russia sends a missile to hit Manchester, two-pound bus fares are not going to save us.”

Nor, the reader may object, will one speech save the Conservatives. That is perfectly true. But the speech nevertheless gave the Tory infantry, gravely depleted in number in recent years, something to cheer about.

She enjoys saying the things Burnham will not say: “Our country is running out of money.”

We have to live within our means, it is businesses which create growth, government must get out of the way of people who want to work hard and get on: these ancient verities are invested with new life by Badenoch.

She saved to the end the promise to abolish inheritance tax on the family home, an announcement greeted with a prolonged standing ovation.

“We have something for everyone,” she cried, which sounded a bit extravagant, but she had long since captured the hearts of her hearers, and finished to a storm of applause.

After a fitting pause, her husband, Hamish Badenoch, came up on stage with her, and with touching modesty congratulated her. This was with the woman as the power figure.

Giles Dilnot wrote on Wednesday morning on this site that Badenoch needed to deliver “an absolute barnstormer”, and so she had proceeded to do.

Tim Montgomerie, founder of ConHome, lamented yesterday afternoon on Twitter that each party has used its conference to shore up its core vote, which for the Conservatives he puts at about 25 per cent.

As far as Badenoch is concerned, this seems a bit unfair. It is true that her most eye-catching measures – ameliorating the £100.000 cliff edge as well as reducing inheritance tax – will benefit voters who are already affluent.

But that does not mean the appeal of these measures will be limited to the well-off. All who aspire to be well-off will find such reforms attractive.

Far more than a quarter of the electorate believes in hard work, lower taxes, welfare reform, stronger defence and being able to pass the family house on to one’s children, provided these things are brought about in a sensible way.

A Labour friend lamented to me recently that his party has lost the tradespeople who rise early to go to work and are fed up with subsidising their idle neighbours.

Before Badenoch spoke, we heard from Douglas Lumsden, victor in the Aberdeen South by-election, a battle generally ignored by the southern media, obsessed as it was by the contest in Makerfield, 300 miles to the south.

Lumsden carried the day in Aberdeen South with almost 50 per cent of the vote, and a majority of 6050 over the Scottish Nationalists, the previous holders of the seat. As he told the conference, “We won the backing of many people who had never voted Conservative before.”

The Government’s refusal to allow the development of new oil and gas fields in the North Sea is a disaster for workers in Aberdeen, but as Lumsden pointed out, Labour is still withholding that approval, for fear of losing votes to the Greens in today’s Holborn and St Pancras by-election.

Aberdeen South, where Badenoch campaigned five times, will not be the last seat where Burnham’s anxiety to propitiate the Left, including the Parliamentary Labour Party, opens opportunities for the Conservatives to appeal far beyond their core vote.

Kevin Hollinrake, the party Chairman, had earlier delighted the conference by producing a pint of beer, and Zuzu, his two-year-old black labrador, in response to the absurd claim by a Labour minister that a black labrador in a country pub is part of a “far-right” vision of Britain.

Zuzu received a standing ovation to rival those given to Badenoch herself. Love of dogs is another emotion not confined to a mere quarter of the electorate.

Badenoch has launched a pugnacious attempt to become the voice of common sense, the leader who will sweep away lefty wishful thinking.

In Hollinrake’s words, “She stands and we must stand for the people who do the right thing.”