For the first time during the Conservative party conference, there were queues outside the auditorium, with standing room only long before Boris Johnson came onstage. For days, his challenge to Theresa May's authority had overshadowed the action in Manchester, like a murder that takes place offstage.
Everyone was very cross, we were told – the delegates, the MPs and above all his cabinet colleagues – about Johnson’s vanity, his disloyalty and his irresponsible hunt for the limelight. But as he marched towards the podium, thumbs sticking out of his jacket pockets and blond head forward, he was about to remind the party why he is forgiven every time.
He started quietly, linking the Las Vegas shooting massacre with the bomb attack at Manchester Arena last May, showing the first flash of his crowd-pleasing style when he thanked his junior ministers, comparing them to the pharaohs of Upper and Lower Egypt. He described Alan Duncan as a Mount Rushmore of wisdom, "dynamically triangulating between Europe and America decoding President Trump for President Juncker and vice versa".
Like Jeremy Corbyn in Brighton last week and Trump every week, Johnson attacked the press, singling out the Financial Times and the Economist for being "slightly less than cheerful" about Brexit. But it was Corbyn who was the main target and Johnson got his audience warmed up with a music hall-style joke about the Labour leader's support for Venezuela.
“He says he still admires Bolivarian revolutionary socialism,” he said.
“I say he’s Caracas.”
Mock outrage
With mock outrage, Johnson said Corbyn’s position on Venezuela was a disgrace, adding that many Labour MPs were uncomfortable with the impression their leader gave “at glutinous victory-style Chavista rallies” that he had won the election in June.
"He didn't win. You won – we won. Theresa May won," he said.
Johnson then made an ostentatious display of loyalty to the prime minister, saying he agreed with “every syllable” of her Florence speech on Brexit, which he appeared to question less than a week ago.
Soon he was back to bashing Corbyn, delighting the crowd with one-liners as he portrayed Labour as a party determined to take Britain back to the 1970s.
“We want a country with a government that works for everyone. Corbyn wants a Britain where everyone works for the government,” he said.
No limit
Johnson ran through a list of Conservative achievements in office, sang the praises of the free market and talked up Britain’s global influence. Freed from the EU and its regulations, there was no limit to what Britain would achieve.
“We are going to crack global warming, with British clean technology and British green finance – in which we lead the world,” he said.
“I believe we will eventually find a cure for the psychological contamination of radical Islamist extremism. Just as we have eradicated smallpox and polio.”
It was all fanciful nonsense, none of it supported by a single fact, but it cheered up a hall full of Conservatives after three days of gloom in Manchester. Not a word of Johnson’s speech was disloyal to May but every moment of it was a reminder of the more exciting alternative he represents.
