Tory revival is all about housing
I've never known a wall of police, private security and steel fences quite as impermeable as what surrounds the Conservative Party Conference hall in Manchester.
It creates the impression of a party in a bunker, cut off from the rest of the UK - and is a very unfortunate metaphor for the state of the government.
To their credit, the Tory members here are acutely aware of the mess their ministers and their prime minster are in - even if the cabinet itself is still struggling to come to terms with the magnitude of the task ahead.
Those members are not remotely shy in coming to chat with me, and they typically want to get three things off their respective chests:
Or to put it another way, if they want to hear one thing from the prime minister this week it is about how to persuade voters, or at least those under 40, that they can acquire the kind of financial "stake" in the country that would give them a reason to prefer the Tories' market solutions over Labour's public-sector ones.
This isn't rocket science. More than anything else Tory members want to see an ambitious programme of housebuilding - with the homes going exclusively to those on lower incomes (and not foreign investors).
When I interviewed the Chancellor Philip Hammond this morning he volunteered that Sunday's announcement of the £10bn expansion of the "help-to-buy" scheme - which increases the borrowing power of first-time buyers to help them meet the hugely inflated prices of British properties - doesn't go nearly far enough.
He doesn't demur that a much bolder housing strategy is needed. If that isn't announced by the PM on Wednesday, a lot of people here will question why they devote their lives to the Tory cause.