Boris is sprawling across the centre ground

That was the most Boris Johnson speech imaginable. His supporters at party conference will have lapped it up, they certainly did in the hall — and his detractors will have been infuriated by it.

Johnson’s political aim was clear. To sprawl across the centre-ground, to ensure that to outflank him you have to go pretty far to the left on economics and the right on culture. He was the NHS lover who opposes cancel culture. He used jokes not just to emphasise his own points but to attack his opponents too. His claim that if ‘Captain Hindsight’, Keir Starmer, had been in charge of Columbus’s expedition they would only have discovered Tenerife was a potent example of political humour.

But there was a risk in the speech too. As Johnson spoke, the gas price was surging again.