Watching the clips of the Tory party conference reminded me of the characters and phantoms that Charles Dickens put before us nearly 180 years ago in A Christmas Carol. In fact, there was something worthy of the fiction-writer in the characters and phantoms that the leader, ministers and delegates put before us at the conference itself.
What an array of enemies we now have to look out for: the anti-growth coalition (whoever they are), people who arrive in dinghies (much more dangerous than people who arrive in planes), the north London metropolitan elite (apologies to south Londoners who feel excluded), social Marxists (I always thought the enemy was “cultural Marxists” so I’m not sure if these Marxists are the same or worse), people who think that benefits should be linked to prices (they seem to be the enemy within), the BBC (but not David Attenborough, presumably), anti-British historians (you know who you are), university teachers who teach Harry Potter (blush! That’s me: guilty as charged, ma’am), and – weighed down with centuries of school-book blood, sweat and menace – “the mob”.
