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.
Away from the clubby atmosphere of a lobby dinner, the prime minister publicly insisted none of this was misleading. And it has been notable how a number of senior Tories followed this lead at the conference in Manchester.
Among the supposed policies seen off by the government are a tax on meat, blanket 20mph zones, councils deciding when you can go shopping, and a surprise return for the myth about EU regulations on bendy bananas.
While some of the discussions can seem ludicrous, the sense that the Downing Street operation has decided to deliberately sow untruths to seek an electoral advantage has prompted worry among some Conservative MPs.
The sheer number of provably false statements made recently by Sunak and his ministers backs up this theory.
There has been particular concern when untruths stated by ministers at the conference have leaned into conspiracy theories.
Perhaps the most glaring alternative fact was the pledge by Mark Harper, the transport secretary, in his conference speech to crack down on “15-minute city” schemes that mean “councils can decide how often you go to the shops, and that they can ration who uses the roads and when”.
The 15-minute city is an urban planning idea based around localism, but it has become the focus for a swathe of online conspiracy theories about a supposed UN-led attempt to lock people into their home neighbourhoods.
Andrew Bowie, a junior minister subsequently quizzed by the BBC about Harper’s interpretation of the idea, was unable to name an example of a UK council seeking to restrict people’s access to shops, adding that such ideas were “coming up in discussions online”.
Perhaps not unexpectedly, Carlos Moreno, the French-based urbanist who came up with the 15-minute city concept, labelled the government’s view of it claptrap, adding that he and his family had faced death threats from conspiracists.
There was also unease at the conference. Nicola Richards, a Tory backbencher who took part in a fringe event about the spread of conspiracy theories, condemned Harper’s misuse of the term.
“As politicians, we have a responsibility to make sure that we are talking about facts and being accurate about what we’re saying,” she said. “If you told me a few years ago that people would be getting vexed about local planning frameworks, and that it fed into a whole web of conspiracy theories, I just wouldn’t believe you.”
This was not even the only falsehood in Harper’s speech. He also accused councils, and Wales, of imposing “blanket” 20mph limit zones, when these have been introduced at most as a default, one subject to local conditions.
Shortly after Bowie floundered in his interview, the energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, faced a similarly excruciating interview, this time on Sky News, about the suggestion in her conference speech that Labour wanted to tax meat.
Challenged multiple times to justify the idea, Coutinho began by arguing it was “part of the debate”, eventually resorting to: “Keir Starmer doesn’t ever tell people exactly what he thinks.”
Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, also mentioned meat in her speech, claiming that unnamed “green zealots” wanted everyone to only eat fake meat.
In a resurrection of one of UK politics’ most venerable myths, Coffey also said she would rescind “absurd” EU regulations on bendy bananas, saying it was not the government’s job to decide “the shape of bananas you want to eat”.
A relic of the pre-Brexit Eurosceptic era, while the EU has had regulations covering the shape of bananas, which did state that in general they should be “free from malformation or abnormal curvature”, this was a fruit-grading guideline without any limits on what could be sold.
Away from the main conference stage, this slightly easy-going relationship with accuracy was mirrored in several fringe meetings, taking in subjects both borderline inane and deeply serious.
In the latter camp was the statement by Susan Hall, the Tories’ candidate to be London mayor, that Jewish communities in the capital were “frightened” under the “divisive” rule of Sadiq Khan, the Labour incumbent.
While Hall later, and a bit unconvincingly, tried to argue she was simply referring to Khan’s record on crime, her comments were reminiscent of the Conservatives’ racist campaign when Khan, who is Muslim, first stood for mayor in 2016.
Hall’s comments were widely condemned, and it is likely that many more Tory MPs beyond Richards are uncomfortable with a wider tactic of leaning towards untruths to bash Labour.
But what is also certain is that with Sunak’s party close to 20 percentage points behind in the polls, you can expect to see more of this. Much more.
• This article was amended on 4 October 2023 to remove some personal information.
