O brave new world! An hour before Rishi Sunak’s speech, I went to get my pass. “You haven’t been given one,” I was told by the Tory press office. I couldn’t even use a colleague’s. It was me they didn’t want. Me and my luxury beliefs. Then things got truly wild. The Telegraph’s sketch writer was also banned. Not for the first time this week, the Conservative party conference had disappeared through the looking glass.
Then redemption. After half an hour of ridicule on Twitter, the Tories changed their mind. When they had said I wasn’t welcome, what they really meant was that they were desperate for me to come. Even Rish! is into dialectics these days. He couldn’t wait for me. No one could imagine how I’d ever thought otherwise. There were even plenty of empty seats in the media section for me. Whoever would have guessed?
