Conservative party conference

As a clarion call, a sounding of hosannas, a piece of fiery rhetoric to hold puissance over the soul of the nation, ‘Build Back Better’ is a raspberry. It is a stock that will never sell, a verbal wreck. It lacks zing and pep and, above all, Boris. If Lenin had disembarked from his sealed train and told the frenzied crowds that he would ‘Build Back Better’, they would have packed him back to the Huns. Having said that, there were times yesterday when Boris riffed on the theme and seemed a bit more himself. ‘Build Back Beaver,’ he said. (Was Carrie backstage?) And even ‘Build Back Burger,’ which sounded

It is hard not to feel sorry for Priti Patel. She would surely have been a Tory conference darling at the gathering that never happened back in autumn 2020 at the height of the pandemic. Back then she always came towards the top of cabinet ministers’ popularity in the monthly survey conducted by the Conservative Home website. But this year the Home Secretary’s ratings have dropped like a stone. She currently sits in 29th place, staring up in envy at such magnetic figures as Alok Sharma and Alister Jack and without even the comfort of knowing that there is always Gavin Williamson to look down on. In the mini-hall being used

In a lengthy interview on the Today programme this morning, Boris Johnson denied that the UK’s plans for the Irish border will require checks a few miles from the border. When asked if the UK was proposing a ‘hard border’ a few miles in from the border, he said ‘absolutely not’. But he did say that it is ‘just the reality’ that there will have to be checks somewhere.  Given that Ireland and the EU have made checks anywhere on the island of Ireland a red line, there is going to have to be movement from one side or the other if there is to be a deal. Boris Johnson

Mark Francois, Arlene Foster and John Redwood have just taken part in a panel discussion on Brexit at Manchester’s Comedy Club (where else?). Francois quoted Robert Frost’s poetry as he made his plea to the audience that he wanted ‘to live in a free country’ outside the EU. It won’t come as much of a surprise that there was no love lost for Brussels’ bureaucrats at the event, but there was a bigger bogeyman in the audience: Francois’s former Tory party colleagues. The Tory Brexiteer and self-declared ‘Spartan’ reeled off a list of names of those who he said would never support Britain leaving the EU. Among a group of

When the Tories last came to Manchester for their party conference, delegates were greeted by a ‘Hang the Tories’ protest banner. Mr S is sad to report that the welcome this time from some is not any friendlier. ‘130,000 killed under Tory rule. Time to level the playing field’, declares a banner in Salford above two effigies of hanging figures: Will those who condemned Boris Johnson for his language in parliament this week also speak out about this?