BRIAN READE: ‘Kemi Badenoch’s outdated ­Thatcherite tunes make Tories much more irrelevant’

My most embarrassing ­journalistic moment came on Millennium Eve. The Mirror wanted a front-page report from the centre of London filed at 10pm to make the first edition, aimed at capturing the historic dawn of a new century.

Britain’s biggest-ever pyrotechnic display was supposed to light up the Thames, producing a “River Of Fire” that would be visible from space, so my 10pm copy began with a line about London’s river joining the Great Wall of China in man-made wonders visible from hundred of miles above Earth. Shortly after Big Ben chimed midnight my phone lit up with this message: “We couldn’t see that river of fire from Canary Wharf never mind space. Rewrite ASAP.”

The humiliation came back to me this week watching Kemi Badenoch being grilled on her plans for protecting Britain with an “Iron Dome” to stop missiles raining down from space, which was splashed over most of Tuesday’s front pages. All for a snip at £10billion, presumably bought from Home Bargains. Sadly, like the River Of Fire, it was utter balls.

“I’ve never called it an Iron Dome,” Badenoch told sceptical journalists, even though the Tories had released a statement labelling it an Iron Dome and she had written a newspaper piece calling it an Iron Dome, presumably in the hope of rebranding herself as The Iron Dome Lady.

“It’s a Britannia Shield,” she winced, which made it sound more like a dodgy double-glazing firm who dupe the well-off elderly. Which, to be fair, was what this woefully underwhelming Tory conference was all about, with its theme of “this country’s biggest problem is that rich Brits aren’t rich enough. So vote for us and we’ll slash your taxes”.

They even got a celebrity turn in Jeremy Clarkson to amplify their message by telling conference that it’s become so hard to make money in a country he continues to make millions out of that he might open his next ­business abroad. Top geezer. Clarkson did come up with a good line, though, as he looked out at the sparse Birmingham hall and asked why so many people had come “dressed as seats”. Maybe there was an imaginary Iron Dome keeping people out. Or, more logically, a dominant Reform and a resurgent Labour under Andy Burnham have made the Tories seem so irrelevant there was nothing worth listening to.

Which is why Badenoch’s offer of slashing inheritance tax and stamp duty, plus free childcare for millionaires, is aimed solely at the wealthy southern shires because she knows she’s lost the rest of the country. An offer that would address Britain’s anaemic growth about as much as docking lollipop ladies’ wages would.

It doesn’t matter because, like the Iron Dome, those tax cuts which would cost many billions will never happen. They’re just old ­Thatcherite tunes being rehashed to hit the G-spots of blue-rinsed ladies who lunch, and their golf-bore husbands. Activists said the biggest hit of conference was the Tory version of the Bayeux Tapestry but having watched a lot of it the only famous artwork I could think of was Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

Which was how Badenoch must have looked when she realised her Iron Dome couldn’t stop the gales of laughter raining down on her parade. She should get used to it.