It was a big day for the Tory conference. There was a real celebrity in town. Normally the sort of famous people who choose to come to party conferences are people for whom the credulous adulation of showbiz wasn’t enough and so they go to the bit beyond the bottom of the barrel and look to politics for their ego highs: think the supremely dislikable Izzard.
Yet in Birmingham today was someone – though not without his controversies – who is actually liked by the British public. As a sign that the shadow rural team think they have a chance of beating Labour’s scorched earth policy for the countryside, we had a fireside chat with none other than Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson, in a smart suit, completed his transition from the nation’s naughty petrol-head uncle to its besuited, furious at Defra uncle. Everything he said was supremely sensible and recognisably conservative. I suspect he’s too clever to stand for parliament, but if he did, he’d outperform Labour’s current Defra offering in an instant.
Whoever commissioned the Birmingham tapestry rightly sussed that we journalists are a vain breed
Later on in the day, the Tories were clearly hoping to make a case for their economic strategy. Despite Labour’s running of the economy resembling a group of spider monkeys trying to pilot a nuclear submarine, there still doesn’t seem to be the breakthrough the Tories need to restore their reputation as a party of prudent money. It wasn’t helped by Mel Stride having the charisma of a flytipped mini fridge. However, Sir Mel’s replacement Andrew Griffith has already run into trouble due to his associations with the Elizabeth Bathory of the Tory Party, Liz Truss.
Griffith arrived on stage looking a bit like he was auditioning to be Mole in a live action remake of The Wind in the Willows. He had been introduced by a vast, terrifying video-link of a very pregnant Claire Coutinho and so, when the diminutive Griffith emerged on the stage, blinked and said ‘Conference, the Britain we love has a debt problem’ it was a little underwhelming to say the least.
His joke deliveries had that classic overcoached conference feel to them, his voice going up just a bit too early in the sentence and so ruining the punchline, as with a gag about putting Angela Rayner in charge of things. It was a reminder of why Burnham and Farage – both of whom are capable of faking their authenticity – don’t yet fear the Tories.
Yet the lack of charisma needn’t necessarily be a problem; the electorate would probably be delighted to have a break from the performative girlboss nonsense paired with sub-zero competency of Rachel Reeves or the faux pub chumminess combined with astronomic tax rises which we seem to be getting from John Healey. Griffith rather endearingly – and rarely for a contemporary politician – explicitly told the conference that he had long ago given up trying to be popular. He committed himself to cuts in civil service numbers, government advertising costs, net zero subsidies and welfare as well as opening the door to investment in new nuclear. All sensible stuff, but the British public may not be in the mood to listen, and invariably Labour will just shout ‘Liz Truss’ at him. Time will tell if his Commons performances can break through.
Despite warnings from Sir John Curtice that the best they can really hope for nationally is a repeat of their obliteration last time, there was a jovial mood at the conference. Much was made of the mock Bayeux tapestry, already decried by Labour as ‘AI slop’. Well, if so, then maybe AI knows something about the deepest desires of the Tories.
Whoever commissioned the Birmingham tapestry rightly sussed that we journalists are a vain breed and so including physical depictions of a dozen well-connected lobby hacks almost certainly guaranteed that they would share images of it with their followers. However, surely whichever Spad was in charge of the AI prompt didn’t explicitly ask for a sexy Angela Rayner? It’s hardly a secret that the Tories have long been the most sexually debased of the main parties but if even an AI Bayeux Tapestry is clocking their grottiest little inner fantasies, then we might be in deeper trouble than we feared.
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