Rishi the revolutionary? Come off it

It was preposterous. A prime minister at the head of a party that’s been running the country for 13 years posed as a revolutionary today. Rishi Sunak presented himself to the Tory conference as a dashing anarchist, an upstart rebel, a fearless saviour who wants to wrest power from an authoritarian clique and hand it back to the people.

‘Our mission is to fundamentally change our country’, he cried. Evidently he’d forgotten that the Tories have been in office for the last decade-and-a-bit.

To the surprise of no one, he announced that HS2 will be scrapped. The Birmingham-to-Manchester leg is no more, he declared.

‘The right thing to do when the facts change is to have the courage to change direction.’

He pledged to spend ‘every penny’ of the leftover £36 billion on ‘hundreds and hundreds’ of new transport schemes. Mostly in the North. Roads, trams, by-passes and railways will all be built, he chirruped excitedly.