HENRY DEEDES watches Boris Johnson bring boost to Tory conference
What a blast of sunshine! HENRY DEEDES watches Boris Johnson bring a boost to Tory party conference
For the past three days, plumes of gloomy nimbus have hung high over the Manchester skyline like saggy bloomers flapping on the washing line.
Yesterday, it was clear blue skies in this fair city. After a dark, dank week, Boris Johnson had brought a little sunshine.
The Prime Minister’s party conference speech was truly a political oddity.
It contained no new policy announcements. In fact, other than revealing his dear old mum voted for Brexit, it gave us nothing fresh at all.
It zigged, it zagged, it segwayed all over the place. The language was so idiosyncratic at times it was though a bubbling pot of alphabet spaghetti had gone splat on his script.
The hall’s reaction? They loved every second of it.
To the party faithful Boris is a balm. A cool, soothing ointment on prickly skin. Unlike previous leaders they feel they’ve finally got their man. Forget Brexit, forget Gropegate. There is a sense here that as long as his baby hippo-like frame is slouched in the driving seat, everything will be fine.
Hardened Manchester United fans will tell you they don’t expect their players to perform like Charlton, Best and Law each week. But they do demand to see a bit of spirit.
Carrie Symonds sported a ‘look-at-me’ magenta at the party conference in Manchester today. She floated in the middle of the Venn diagram between the circle marked ‘companion’ and the one which says ‘status unknown’
With Boris, you get brightness. You get optimism. You get, as they say round these parts, Sun-she-iiiiine.
His speech was a ticket-only affair. Queues were snaking back out of the conference centre as early as 10am. This did not happen when Theresa May was leader. Some wag had scheduled a talk just before entitled ‘Women’s Place in Politics’. It featured the Tories’ parliamentary candidate for Stroud, a sassy solicitor by the name of Siobhan Baillie.
If she gets in, keep an eye out for her. She’s mustard.
Boris arrived just after 11.30am. He made a rock star’s entrance, filing in through the main hall, The Who’s stadium stomper Baba O’Riley blaring through the PA. Meaty handshakes were proffered to anyone who wanted one.
Girlfriend Carrie Symonds, resplendent in ‘look-at-me’ magenta, had taken her seat next to her beau’s old man Stanley just prior to the PM’s arrival. There was an awkward moment where some delegates clapped, though many of them did not. At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, Boris needs to sort this. Where does she fit in? At the moment the poor girl is floating in the middle of the Venn diagram between the circle marked ‘companion’ and the one which says ‘status unknown’.
The PM got off to a slowish start. There were some boring welcoming remarks, a few tributes to Theresa May and Ruth Davidson. This was clearly the speech writer’s stuff he’d been told to say.
Carrie presented a double-hand clasp after Johnson delivered his keynote speech to delegates at the Manchester Central convention complex today
Then the real Boris arrived. The onomatopoeic language, the batty one-liners. It was though he’d suddenly yanked the Biro from the aide’s mitt and got to work.
The UK, he said, thanks to the ‘super-masticated subject of Brexit’, was like a world-class athlete with a pebble in their shoe. If Parliament were a laptop, ‘the screen would be showing the pizza wheel of doom’.
If it were a reality TV show, every MP would have been voted out of the jungle by now, ‘but at least we could have watched the Speaker being forced to eat a kangaroo’s testicle’. If Boris’s jokes work it is because he speaks in his own language. It is surreal, almost Quixotic. The audience reaction was feverish.
Alphabet spaghetti: Johnson’s language was so idiosyncratic at times it was though a bubbling pot of alphabet spaghetti had gone splat on his script
Jeremy Corbyn got a lengthy kicking. The SNP were trying to drag the Labour leader to the throne ‘like some Konstantin Chernenko figure’. ‘Look it up!’ he then advised.
So I did. Chernenko was a Russkie reluctantly made general secretary of the Communist Party by the Kremlin against his will.
As for the Lib Dems, he added, it was time to respect the Trades Descriptions Act and remove the word Democrat from their name.
He used the speech to rally his troops (pictured with Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid). He wanted more houses built and asked:‘What do we need for good housing, Eddie?’ pointing at his baffled adviser Sir Edward Lister
By now the PM was pirouetting, twisting, turning and slapping the lectern as though someone had just given his joints a good squirt of WD40.
There was some serious stuff about the NHS and his plans to build more hospitals. This would be paid for by growing the economy – though ‘not with deranged and ruinous plans borrowed from the playbook of Bolivarian revolutionary Venezuela!’
Time to rally his troops. He wanted to start rounding up the drugs gangs. ‘Priti’s going to help with this,’ he said motioning to Home Secretary Priti Patel. ‘Damn right,’ mouthed Priti. I really am warming to her, if that’s possible.
He wanted to improve roads. ‘The A303, the A21 – Saj, what are they? You were reciting them all yesterday…’
He wanted more houses built. ‘What do we need for good housing, Eddie,’ he asked, pointing at his baffled adviser Sir Edward Lister. None of these bits was in the script by the way.
Carrie Symonds arrived at the Conservative Party Conference today (left) shortly after Johnson made his own arrival to make his conference speech (right)
There was a pledge to install super-fast broadband everywhere, spreading across the country ‘like super-informative vermicelli’. At this point the young lady next me was in fits of giggles.
We got a lot of optimistic chat about industry.
The UK is building two space ports, we were told, and about to launch missions to space. ‘Can you think which communist cosmonaut to coax into the cockpit,’ he asked the crowd. ‘Cor-byn!’ they unisoned.
Optimism, optimism.
Post-Brexit, we can ban the live shipment of animals (interestingly, this got the biggest cheer of the afternoon) and seize back control of our fishing waters.
Scottish Secretary Alister Jack gave the PM’s father Stanley Johnson (pictured next to Carrie today) a thwack across the shoulders and told him: ‘Your body done good’
‘It is one of the bizarre features of the SNP that with names like Salmon and Sturgeon they are committed to handing back fishing control to the EU!’
A mighty roar greeted him when he finished.
Exiting the hall, Carrie suddenly appeared alongside him, both paws around his. A double hand clasp.
When the rest of us filed out, I saw a rare sight: an audience leaving a conference speech with grins on their faces.
Outside, Scottish Secretary Alister Jack gave Stanley Johnson a friendly thwack across the shoulder blades. ‘Your boy done good,’ he said. Stanley: ‘Oh, he was all right.’
Some, it seems, are harder to please than others.
It’s the way he tells ’em
On the SNP
It is one of the bizarre features of the SNP that with names like Salmond and Sturgeon they are committed to handing back fishing control to the EU. We want to turbo-charge the Scottish fishing sector; they would allow Brussels to charge for our turbot.
On Corbyn
He wants an election now – or that is what he was going to say, poor fellow. The only trouble is that the paragraph was censored by John McDonnell or possibly Keir Starmer.
On space travel
Soon we will be sending missions to the heavens – geostationary satellites. Conference, can you think of anyone who could trial the next mission? Can you think which communist cosmonaut to coax into the cockpit? Let’s figuratively if not literally send Jeremy Corbyn into orbit where he belongs.On exports
We export Jason Donovan CDs to North Korea. We exported Nigel Farage to America – though he seems to have come back.
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