His government, Rishi Sunak said, had scrapped plans to ban Christmas, Strictly Come Dancing, and puppies. This was a very obviously self-knowing joke. But at times at the Conservative conference, it can feel as if the joke might be on voters.
In the traditionally lighthearted speech to a dinner for Westminster journalists last week, Sunak had been mocking himself for claiming, amid a watering down of green policies, to have averted a series of policies that were never formally proposed, including mandatory car-pooling and seven different recycling bins.
