As seen in the Daily Telegraph
I awake with a start and a splitting headache. Where am I? Slowly, the moving shapes take on settled form. I am sprawled on the floor of a double room in a Birmingham Travelodge. The lights are on, the curtain is drawn. There is the smell of Smirnoff Ice and stale poppers in the air. I try to rise, but when I put weight on my hand I wince with pain. Holding my palm up in front of me, I see it’s streaked with gore. Stumbling to my feet, I trip over the sleeping shadow minister for ‘UK Security’. Someone – or something – shifts in the bed. ‘Kemi… dome…’ it moans.
I stagger to the bathroom just in time to retch. An Adam Smith Institute ‘Freedom Fellow’ is passed out in the bath, nude, clutching the still-on showerhead like a babe in arms. Then I look in the mirror. Oh Lord. One of my eyes is black and I’m missing a tooth. I retch again, and up come the remnants of Andrew Griffith-themed chocolate coins.
I retch again and up come the remnants of Andrew Griffith-themed chocolate coins
How had the LGBTCons party at Tory conference led to this? The evening hadn’t started well. I was upset at not being one of the ‘hacks’ featured in the Bayeux Tapestry, so I’d skipped the warm white wine and gone straight for vodka.
I remember commiserating with Tom Harwood in a corner. ‘Can’t believe they put Calgie in,’ he huffed. ‘I’m presenting GB four days a week and they put Ozempic boy there instead of me. Unbelievable.’
I wasn’t even angry like Tom. All I felt was self-loathing. Years of graft, of late night ‘paper reviews’, of pretending to be a precocious 14-year-old while closing in on 50 – and for what? An address to the Conservative Friends of India on why I reject ethno-nationalism? One or two of the spottier parliamentary assistants occasionally thrown my way?
The next hour was a blur. I faintly remember a ‘catchup kebab’ with Kevin Hollinrake, later finding myself in the queue to the LGBTCons drinks do, bumming a cigarette off a strange young man who introduced himself only as a ‘net contributor’.
My next memory was of her. Kemi. Surrounded by a gaggle of adorers, leading the dance to ‘WAP’ by Cardi B. By then thoroughly sloshed, I charged-stroke-lurched towards her.
‘Kemi,’ I said. ‘Please reconsider. Put me in the tapestry, Kemi. Please, Kemi. I’ll write whatever you want, Kemi. Please.’ The shadow justice secretary, Nick Timothy, flanked by a praetorian guard of ‘Next Gen Tories’, blocked my way. ‘Step off, mate,’ said Theresa May’s old Rasputin.
‘You lost us the 2017 election, beardie-boy,’ I spat. ‘And now you swan around here like you own the place. After all I’ve done for you lot, all my columns comparing Kemi to Thatcher, and you couldn’t even put me on a tapestry?!’
Our standoff was defused by a tap on my shoulder from a grinning Harwood. ‘Jim! I was wrong! I am on the tapestry. Look!’ He unlocked his phone and showed me a selfie alongside his likeness on the cotton.
That’s when I dashed for the window. It took four people to prevent me from leaping out, including the strong but strangely wet hands of the shadow justice secretary himself. Sir Niall Ferguson pulled at my leg, Sir Grant Shapps put me in a headlock and Laura Trott clutched my waist. ‘Just let me diiiieeeee,’ I wailed. Minutes later I was in a heap on the floor. ‘I’ll take care of him,’ said Sir Gavin Williamson, and I was picked up, tenderly.
I am staring at myself in the mirror as I remember all this. All in all, it was a pretty standard Tory conference. Putting a finger to the air in Birmingham, I’d summarise thus: the bounce in Kemi’s personal ratings hasn’t yet translated into a lead in the polls. But as Ella Fitzgerald once said: ‘It ain’t about where you’ve come from, honey, it’s about where y’all going, sugar.’
Comments