The Tory party conference in Birmingham last October was a bizarre affair by any reckoning. Liz Truss’s leadership had already been self-torpedoed, her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, was just about to be thrown overboard, and there was a palpable need for someone to rally the troops.
The home secretary, Suella Braverman, was a month into the job and hardly a household name. A diminutive figure with a bloodless style of delivery, she wasn’t an obvious candidate to raise spirits. Addressing the conference in a true blue dress against a royal blue backdrop, she didn’t exactly stand out, and her speech was a predictable mixture of foreign criminals and system-gaming lawyers that brought dutiful applause from the hall, rather than outright acclaim.
