“I just sent out some pictures of Kemi saying Kemi’s the Prime Minister,” remarked Elliott Franks, a photographer, to his colleagues in the press area at the Conservative conference.
Attendance at the Conservative Party Conference has a disorientating effect. The longer it lasts the more cut off one feels from the outside world, and so one is, by a ring of steel.
But outside that ring of steel the party’s enemies are no longer visible. No protesters scream in one’s face that one is a vile Conservative as one approaches the entrance tent in order to be scanned.
“PEDESTRIANISE THE M6” is the only protest placard I have seen, presumably a joke, unless I failed to recognise Zack Polanski, groovy new leader of the Greens.
Inside the conference, it was at first just as quiet. The deep potations of the previous night had not encouraged Tories to turn out in large numbers to hear Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, speak at 10.00 a.m.
Smaller numbers are in some ways an advantage. One gets nearer the action, such as it is. I had a front-row seat for Philp.
He abandoned the lectern, strode from one side of it to the other, and told the conference he had set up a business, a delivery company, as soon as he left university, driving the van himself and trying not to crash it.
“I literally know what it is to deliver,” Philp remarked. “No Labour minister, not even one, has set up a business.”
As for Reform, their policy was “scribbled in a pub on the back of a fag packet”.
The Conservatives would abolish the Immigration Tribunal, “thereby getting rid of every single activist judge”.
All this produced tepid applause. Philp tried his hardest to warm up the audience, but despite at frequent intervals marching from one side to the other, could not quite dissipate the morning chill.
By the time Robert Jenrick, the Shadow Justice Secretary, came on, the hall was appreciably fuller. Donna Jones, mayoral candidate for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight and already PCC for that area, acted as his warm-up act: “He is a man who is not afraid to speak truth to power.”
Jenrick came on carrying an old-fashioned japanned tin box, which he placed on a small round table covered in a black cloth.
Perhaps he was about to perform a conjuring trick. If we were lucky he would saw Donna Jones in half, one half to represent Hampshire and the other the Isle of Wight.
Like all the best performers, Jenrick left us in suspense. He talked at first of other things.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’m fed up with platitudes.”
An attack on his colleagues! If one removed the platitudes from their speeches, what would be left?
Jenrick protested at the Labour Government’s betrayal of Northern Ireland veterans. “Shameful,” someone in the audience shouted.
“For too long the chattering classes drowned out the voice of the people,” Jenrick went on. Good heavens, this maniac was taking on the chattering classes too!
He opened the tin box, and produced a judge’s wig. “It’s something we should all respect and revere,” he said.
His way of doing so was to denounce a large part of the judiciary: “Today I’ve uncovered dozens of judges with links to Open Borders charities.”
According to Jenrick, this is like playing a game of football and finding out half-way through “the referee is actually a season-ticket holder for the other side”.
Judicial bias! What is Jenrick’s remedy? “We will restore the office of the Lord Chancellor to its former glory,” and the Lord Chancellor will once more appoint the judges.
Jenrick launched into a paean of praise to the British nation, including “the quiet kindness of the hospice movement”.
Quiet kindness is not his thing. He prefers noisy unkindness. In his self-appointed role as tribune of the people, he takes it upon himself to become the voice of the saloon bar.
Though press wonders whether he will mount a rebellion against Badenoch, his talents make him more of a poor man’s Nigel Farage.
The hall enjoyed Jenrick’s noisy unkindness, but it would be a mistake to imagination it is yearning to overthrow Badenoch.
ConHome happened to be sitting next to Michael Anderson-Brown, Chairman of St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire Conservative Association, who said: “They will have to find a new Association Chairman if they go for Kemi.”
