I’m waiting near the front door of the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster drinking a coffee. A well-dressed man leans in and whispers: “Did you manage to get your MP over the line?” I’ve been mistaken for one of the last men – and they are almost all men – standing. A true believer.
I don’t want to upset the man so I just mumble that we did get our woman over the line. I don’t mention that the woman was Labour’s Rosena Allin-Khan. It might break him completely.
This is the second gathering of the Popular Conservatism group. At the first, earlier in the year, there was a distinct buzz. Liz Truss was the star speaker and Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson were in attendance, soaking up the vibes. We even had a star nonentity, Holly Valance, an ever-present at batshit-crazy rightwing events. Those were the days when the Tories still mattered.
Now not so much. The speaker list is a lineup of deadbeats and never-wases. No sign of Thick Lizzie. The organisation that seemed to have been formed for her coronation is now without its queen. Ever since she lost her seat last week, Truss has been having the mother of all sulks. Won’t answer the phone, won’t even get out of bed. Though she will keep drawing the £110k a year that gets handed out to ex-prime ministers.
Half the auditorium has been roped off, and by the time the conference – if you can call it that – kicks off there are barely 200 people there. Still, there are 14 people waiting to follow proceedings on YouTube. So that’s something. In the background Gerry Rafferty’s Get It Right Next Time is playing through the PA system. At least someone has a sense of humour. It won’t be long before they need to rethink the Popular bit of their Conservatism.
Annunziata – Nancy to the riff-raff – Rees-Mogg makes the introductions. “It’s wonderful so many of you have come,” she says. Hard to know if this sarcasm or whether she’s just relieved that everyone in her WhatsApp group has turned up.
We mustn’t celebrate colleagues who have lost their seats, she adds. But hey, if you must. Clearly there’s no love lost with her brother Jacob. Nor are we here to apportion blame. Could have fooled me.
Next up is Mark Littlewood, former head of the Institute of Economic Affairs and the brains – if you can call it that – behind Liz Truss’s economic miracle. He sets the tone of delusion perfectly. Now is the start of the great rebuild, he declares. This is not a time for a leadership hustings. Just as well because the only sitting MP in the room is Wendy Morton and she’s not being allowed to speak. Imagine being considered too much of a liability by the PopCons.
The tone is relentless. The Tories have been too woke, too leftwing. To listen to this lot you’d imagine the last 14 years had been a socialist paradise. Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak had all been leftist extremists. Double agents dedicated to the destruction of the Tory party, these unhappy few knew and loved. David Starkey even thought that Margaret Thatcher was a closet lefty. Though he’d settle for a dead Maggie over a live Rishi.
“Are we learning from the catastrophe?” sobs David Frost. Er … the idea that Frosty the No Man might learn from anything is the ultimate category error. That would require the cognitive faculties of a three-year-old. Bizarrely, in rightwing circles Dave is considered to be something of an intellectual. A man who confronts the hard truths. To the rest of us he barely seems able to dress himself.
Frosty’s unconsidered opinion is that the last Tory government betrayed the Conservative party. One day he might realise he was actually part of the government. Maybe this is just his way of saying how much he hates himself. The only man to perform acts of passive aggression on himself. Needless to say, he goes on to complain about the Brexit deal that he helped to negotiate. He just can’t help himself. I suppose we ought to feel sorry for him.
On a pre-record from Washington DC, Suella Braverman literally just phones it in. She also seems to have lost the plot entirely. Happy to fill the vacuum left by Liz on the lucrative neocon speaking circuit Stateside. She sounds as if she would be delighted if she never had to come back at all. A loss to the US, but our gain. There are no lengths to which she wouldn’t go to destroy the Tory party and see it out of office for at least three terms. Purge the One Nation softies: split the Tories and return it to its lunatic base.
You know your conference is in trouble when Jacob Rees-Mogg is the sanest person in the room. We’re an irrelevance, he says. No one is listening to us. Apart from some sketch writers in search of some laughs. Though his sanity is short-lived. His advice is for the party to join Reform so that it can remain in opposition in perpetuity. Just remember that it’s our members who give us the best leaders. That would be Thick Lizzy again. The woman who sank a thousand ships.
To see what a genuinely popular party looked like, you only had to turn to the Commons where the 412 Labour MPs had gathered en masse for the election of the speaker. Poor old Pat McFadden was left skulking in the shadows behind one of the exits. The shift in power hasn’t been so graphically illustrated since 1997. The new cabinet was all smiles. They’ve waited a long time for this.
It’s a tradition that the speaker has to look reluctant to take up the office. With Lindsay Hoyle it was the other way round. He loves the job, would be bereft without it, and he was the one dragging Cat Smith and David Davis to the chair. He couldn’t get there fast enough.
Then came the speeches. Keir Starmer paid tribute to Hoyle and called for an end to the self-obsession of some MPs. Dream on. He also squeezed out some hollow words on Diane Abbott’s elevation to mother of the House. Awks. It was Starmer who had been trying to prevent Abbott from standing in her Hackney constituency.
Rishi Sunak in his last few weeks – months, maybe – of standing in as leader of the opposition cut a forlorn figure. This must be torture for him. But he is more gracious in defeat than he ever was as prime minister. Almost likable.
More than could be said for Nigel Farage. These party leader speeches are supposed to be gentle and non-political. Funny, if possible. Nige failed on all three counts. Never one to read the room. He droned on about John Bercow and the betrayal of Brexit. And lied about his party having no experience in parliament. Lee Anderson just about counts. But then with Nige everything is always about Nige. Start as you mean to go on.