QUENTIN LETTS: Kemi Badenoch stood there, small, nonetheless, musing in that smoky voice… not shouting like a larky pretend
Arriving, it could have been day one of a county cricket match (division two). Tickets were checked with benevolence, the crowd was a dribble and a kitchen porter wheeled a tea trolley towards one of the fringe marquees. In the near-empty bar of the Midland Hotel, often a scene of orgiastic boozing at Tory conferences, soft harp music played.
Things were less funereal in the conference building across the rainswept piazza – ah, cosmopolitan Manchester on an autumnal Sunday. Then to the hall itself. And here, in serried, unraked seats: Tories, sir, about 800 of ’em.
Stolid puddings on the whole, serious middle-Britain. Hyacinth Buckets in charge of shrivelled husbands. Suited young men who walk close to the wall. The occasional Zuleika Dobson.
First item of business: God Save the King. Perhaps ten people sang. We also had a minute’s silence for last week’s synagogue attack. Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake MP lightened the mood with a confession: ‘I used to be an estate agent.’ Boos and laughter. He once visited a woman who had a family portrait on the wall. Mr Hollinrake, admiringly, said it resembled Anthony Hopkins. ‘That,’ said the woman coldly, ‘is my great grandmother.’
Kemi Badenoch speaks at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester
The business eventually succeeded but things were dicey at first. ‘I could have cut and run or joined a rival business…’ said Mr Hollinrake. The audience understood the analogy with Tories joining Reform.
Yorkshireman Kevin, forehead like a walnut, admitted Tory governments were ‘too soft – we forgot about tough love’. But the alternatives (Labour and Reform) were now ‘weakness and moonshine’ and the party had a duty to reconnect to ‘our customers, the voters’.
Newspaper columnist Matthew Syed popped up as a surprise speaker. Bald as one of the ping-pong balls he once whacked for Britain in the Olympics. In 2001 he was a Labour candidate but now he has joined the Tories.
He spoke disarmingly well about ‘the sexism of Islamists’, the Leftist lurch of ‘ultra progressives’, how few politicians are being honest about the economy and Reform’s mad spending promises.
‘I don’t believe Nigel Farage is a racist but I do believe he’s a socialist.’ Tories should show proper penitence, said Syed, and not descend to cheap shots. Whereupon the leader of the Scottish Tories bowled on stage with a daft grin. We heard, too, from the Welsh Tories’ supremo, a squeaky little chap, same pea-pod as Harry Secombe.
He reported that the Welsh government was spending money on solar-powered speedboats for the Wampi people in Peru. Peru is sunnier than Manchester, one hopes.
Kemi Badenoch arrived without much razzle-dazzle and it stayed that way. More a lecture than speech. Her main effort will be on Wednesday. This was a starter, a nibble, a ‘bouche’ without the ‘amuse’.
Without one thump of the tub she laid out the party’s new position on the European Convention on Human Rights.
Lord Wolfson KC had submitted his legal advice – 200 pages, typical lawyer – that we should leave the damn thing. Two hundred pages to state the obvious. The audience clapped, if leadenly. The only real jolt of applause came after Mrs B said her party stood between the squabbling loudmouths of Labour and Reform. One lot whipped up outrage, the other tried to park black people in identity politics.
Kemi spoke of her children and said, ‘I won’t allow anyone on the Right to tell them they do not belong in their own country.’
At last, a glimpse of fervour, a growl of guts amid the stately proceduralism. Her scientific discipline certainly differs from her opponents’ forced anger.
She stands there, short, small, still, musing in that smoky voice, not shouting like a larky fake. But ‘riveting’ is not the word.
Chris Philp ended the session by leaping about, trousers flapping. One of life’s congenital gulpers. He speaks three times faster than Kemi. As he left the stage his waves were the little, circular hand movements of a window-cleaner buffing a particularly obstinate splodge of bird mess.
