“You know what? It’s clear this party conference is going to be a complete shambles. None of us have a clue what we’re doing and the cabinet is falling apart. So let’s cut our losses and pack up and go home right now.” That’s the speech Conservative party chairman Patrick McLoughlin would like to have given to open this year’s conference in Manchester.
Another time, another time. Instead he dragged himself out to face a hall that was barely half full. To fight indifference with indifference. “I’m delighted to be back here,” he began in a tired, depressed monotone. Torpor, torpor everywhere. A few of the people still conscious in the audience sighed. They knew how he felt. This was a party conference where the only nobility on offer was to be found in its suffering.
McLoughlin shrugged helplessly. He’d run out of stuff to say already and he still had 10 minutes to spare. Best to ad lib. The general election. Nobody could possibly have expected there to be one. Except perhaps the prime minister. Even so, it had all gone quite well considering. There was a Tory mayor in Birmingham. And ... and ... that was about it really. “I hope you enjoy this conference,” he said, before departing to lukewarm applause.
While McLoughlin was slowly dying on his feet, Theresa May was sat in the second row, her mouth locked in a frozen rictus smile, slowly dying inside. This wasn’t at all the birthday party she had planned. She’d always known the conference was never going to be much of a laugh, but she hadn’t expected the atmosphere to be quite this bad. Nor had her own performance on the Andrew Marr show done anything to raise anyone’s spirits. Apart from Boris Johnson’s.
Would she like to apologise to the Tory party for screwing up the election? Marr asked. “Let me be clear,” she babbled nervously, frantically trying to make her lips synchronise with the computer glitch that had switched her voice to fast forward. She was clear that she was focused on the business of government and that even though the election hadn’t gone as brilliantly as she had hoped it had still gone a lot more brilliantly than she had hoped.
The Maybot was up and running. Labour would cause a run on the pound, she said. “What’s happened to the pound on your watch?” Marr said drily. May looked bewildered. “It fluctuates,” she said eventually. As in downwards. She also appeared amazed at the possibility that inflations rises could be anything to do with her. Nor was there anything wrong with universal credit. So what if people weren’t getting their benefits for more than six weeks? Surely it was worth a few people dying for such a good cause.
There was a pause while a video clip of the prime minister insisting “Nothing has changed” during the election campaign was played. The Maybot nodded in approval. Nothing had changed. She was still hopelessly out of her depth, limited to mouthing mindless slogans that everyone but her knew to be untrue. The Florence speech had been a magnificent success and everyone was right behind her. Many of them armed with a knife. She had provided certainty. The certainty of uncertainty.
Marr ended by asking if Boris was now unsackable. May’s mouth opened and closed. Wordless. Marr tried again. Sensing she was obliged to say something, she powered down her operating system by saying that everything was just fine. She might just as well have been performing a postmortem on herself. If so, she would be in the right place later on as the main hall by now had less energy than a morgue.
For some reason – presumably because it was the last time anyone in the Tory party was remotely happy or united – the organisers chose to re-run the Maybot’s speech outside Downing Street when she first became prime minister in 2016. But it only served to depress everyone still further as it merely reminded them of how many promises had been broken.
Out came Deadly Dull Damian Green to suck the last remaining traces of life out of the conference. The first secretary of state is a one man black hole. This government wouldn’t be making any uncosted spending commitments, he insisted, hoping that no one would notice Theresa had already spent £12bn inside five minutes earlier in the day. They didn’t. Mostly because anyone whose synapses were still functioning had already voted with their feet and left.