First prize in Tuesday’s £5 draw at the Conservative party conference? A ticket for next year’s party conference. Second prize? Two tickets. I’m here all week. Someone has to be.
For three days the Tories have been on life support in Manchester. Rishi Sunak’s control and command visibly ebbing away. The man who markets himself as the leader who takes difficult decisions unable to take any decisions at all. His party in free-fall. You can feel the energy being sucked out of every conference venue. The speakers in the main hall dying on their feet. One listless performer after another.
The best of them was a Michael Gove who appeared to have spent the morning in his favourite crack den. He bounced on to the stage looking sweaty and nervy. All cranked up and no place to go. He didn’t really have anything to say but he had the energy. He alone could sound vaguely plausible when saying Rish! would win the next election. But that’s mainly because not telling the truth is second nature to him. But then, about 10 minutes in, the Govester wandered off. Almost in mid sentence. As if he had got bored.
It wasn’t until halfway through the afternoon that the punters finally got what they had paid for. A speech so full-on batshit, so divisive, so unpleasant that they could really get behind it. This was their moment. Their time. The leadership speech they had really come to hear. Sunak could say what he liked the following day. He was just an irrelevance. Just someone keeping the party leader’s seat warm until this time next year. Their eyes shone with the fervour of the chosen ones who had been granted a glimpse of the future. A time slip into the far right.
They had been queueing outside the main hall for 30 minutes before the afternoon session. They were even prepared to endure a quarter of an hour of the hapless Alex Chalk. Then the moment of redemption. A saviour risen from the streets of Fareham. On walked a smiling Suella Braverman. She got a standing ovation without saying a word. No pressure then. But then the home secretary knows her target audience. The self-selecting crowd of Tory diehards. The last few believers for whom no prejudice is too much effort.
Suella giggled. As if even she hadn’t quite been expecting this level of adoration. She quickly thanked her ministerial team before getting down to business. Did she read what her critics say about her? Yes, she did. Because she wasn’t too proud to think she couldn’t learn from her mistakes. But after a nano-second’s reflection she had come to realise she had been right all along. She would take no nonsense from woke liberals.
“Who can be trusted to deliver the change we need?” the home secretary continued. She is another minister who doesn’t appear to think that the Conservatives have been in government for the past 13 years. Or at the very least that the Tories have been captured by the Labour party. But she alone would set the country free. She alone could return the UK to a postwar nirvana where nearly everyone was white. Apart from her. And Sunak possibly. But if the Tories insisted on removing him then she wasn’t going to object.
Then she got down to business. Foreigners. There were just too many of them. You literally couldn’t walk down a normal high street without meeting someone foreign. Though thankfully not inside the conference centre. There, 99% of people were white. The right sort of Brits. The thing was that we had just been far too nice to immigrants. Had made them far too welcome. Now there were literally millions and millions of them who were desperate to come here and spoil our way of life. Soon they would be appearing on Gardeners’ World.
This had to stop. Enough was enough. Nothing was off limits. For too long Tories had been far too “squeamish” about people’s human rights. Too frightened of being called racist to be properly racist. And here was the killer line. The immigrants would secretly be thrilled to be discriminated against. It’s what they wanted.
On and on she went. Forget Labour’s Human Rights Act. In reality it was the Criminal Rights Act. The ECHR was just for the feeble-minded. Braverman was sick to death of being nice to people. Why not just presume everyone is a wrong un’ and then bang them up? Saves time. The presumption of innocence had got us nowhere. As had generosity. And under Labour we would literally be snowed under with foreigners. “I am a hate figure because I tell the truth,” she lied. Not even the most deranged Tory thinks Labour has an open borders policy. The reason she’s a hate figure is because there’s plenty to hate.
The longer she went on, the more unhinged she became. She had had enough of luxury beliefs. The sort of beliefs held by people with second homes in Tuscany and the Dordogne. And presumably California. That’s Rishi done for. There was a time when the Tories were a party of aspiration. Who wanted second homes. Or, like half the audience, had them. Luxury beliefs were things like net zero. The climate crisis was just a woke conspiracy theory. And while she was about it, she didn’t much like gay or trans people either. Or guide dogs. Bloody do-gooders.
At this point, Andrew Boff, a Tory London Assembly member, sitting near the front, muttered “Rubbish” and “Homophobic rant” under his breath. He was quickly removed by police and security guards. So much for free speech in the modern Tory party. Boff was then presumably put on the prime minister’s plane and deported to Rwanda. Where he will be executed.
Suella ended by appropriating the Corbyn Shelley quote. The many not the few. That will go down well. She also called the Tories the trade union of the British people. Hmm. That must be why most of the country is on strike. The saner one-nation Conservatives would be appalled. But those in the hall loved it. By far the biggest ovation of the week. Their redeemer liveth.
• Join John Crace at 8pm GMT on Monday 6 November for a livestreamed Guardian Live event where he will be talking about his forthcoming book, Depraved New World, with fellow satirist Ian Hislop. Tickets available here.
Depraved New World by John Crace (Guardian Faber, £16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, pre-order your copy and save 15% at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
