To describe the cascade of misfortune engulfing the Tory conference as unfortunate is to somewhat understate the case. Nevertheless all is not lost. Yet.
First of all defections alone will not sink a party unless they begin to turn from a trickle to a flood. So far there have only been two to UKIP. The resignation of a minister because of vulgar tweets or whatever is of absolutely no interest to the millions wondering how to pay their mortgage this month, so it is news to news gatherers and rubbish to everybody else. Nevertheless this could be the start of something worse and that thought kept many Tory strategists up late last night. The worst it could be, and this would be very bad indeed, is that it is the start of a sequence which the party cannot control.
Party conferences do not have the impact they once did, as this blog has already suggested. Once the activists were fired up, knowing that an election was imminent but not knowing when. A Prime Minister could leave the conference and call it there and then, so everyone everywhere had to be ready. Now we have (for the moment but perhaps not for long) fixed term parliaments so we already know the date and it is months away. Now nobody outside the party membership takes the slightest notice of these conferences anyway as most opinion is formed on the streets and through social media.
And that is the problem, because that is where control can slip away. This takes us to Clacton. If UKIP put Carswell back to Westminster by the skin of his teeth, then the advance of UKIP will be slowed. If they send someone else UKIP is toast. But if, and many think they will, the voters push Carswell back with a landslide, then control of every lever of the General Election campaign passes to Farage and the nightmare for the Tory, Labour and Lib Dem high commands begins.