Friendly head girl who’ll rip stuffing out of your teddy
SHE has been Liberal Democrat leader barely two months but already there are warning signs that Jo Swinson’s oratory manner could seriously start to grate. It’s not just the nannyish diction. She has a way of putting emphasis on everything by finishing each point with Single. Word. Sentences.
She made her maiden conference speech as party leader yesterday and spoke in this manner the entire 50 minutes she was on stage.
Her party’s main raison d’être, she kept telling us, was that it MUST. STOP. BREXIT. Her first act as prime minister would be to revoke Article 50. FROM. DAY. ONE.
The effect was slightly unnerving. But then do we detect an unsettling whiff of animus lurking behind Jo’s jauntiness?
Yes, there’s a certain maternal warmth in those gap-toothed smiles. But you just wonder if that could all turn quite quickly. Like the friendly head girl who really, really wants to be your best friend but who’ll rip all the stuffing out of your favourite teddy if you don’t let her.
It wasn’t the worse speech by a party leader by any means but how much better it might have been if she’d chosen to speak at the beginning of conference rather than at the end.
Her announcement that her party wants to cancel Brexit before a second referendum looks an unnecessary gamble, like a poker player who throws their entire stash of chips into the pot when they’re only clutching a half-decent hand at best.
Her interview rounds on Monday weren’t disastrous but she did not emerge well from them. Flat out renege on the will of 17 million-plus voters? Demented.
After Sam Gyimah’s defection from the Tories, the Lib Dems have had a decentish week. But it really should have been a very good one.
Swinson appeared at around 2.30pm. She took a while to emerge from backstage. For a moment I thought she might have got lost.
She kicked off with some customary back-slapping about the party’s recent gains at the local and EU elections. ‘We’ve shown the others how it’s done,’ she remarked boastfully.
She paid tribute to one of her predecessors, Paddy Ashdown, whose memorial service was this month. She wished he could have been with them yesterday in Bournemouth.
This followed some cracking speeches in the hall about Paddy. Funny, honest and heartfelt. Proper five-star stuff.
Suddenly, Swinson twiddled up the volume.
‘There is no limit to my ambition!’ she hollered. ‘I stand before you today as your candidate FOR. PRIME. MINISTER.’ Standing ovation time. Swinson stood, feet wide apart, her stance a picture of Boudicca defiance. Boris came in for some low-level ribbing. ‘We all know commitment has never been his thing,’ she joshed, tossing the audience a knowing smirk.
She attacked his decision to expel 21 members of his own party ‘including Winston Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames’. POOR Soamsey. The opposition parties are portraying him as some kind of liberal martyr. How he must hate it. Worse, she said, the PM is a chauvinist. For example, his recent remarks about ‘girly swots’ and ‘big girl’s blouses’.
‘He thinks being a girl is a weakness,’ JoJo said of BoJo. ‘He’s about to discover. IT. IS. NOT.’
Woah! That got conference going. All around all the hall, there was a collective stamping of Birkenstocks. We heard some sweet stuff about her late dad encouraging her sense of curiosity and a reference to former US senator Bobby Kennedy. What is it about liberals and their obsession with the Kennedys?
Finally, a wobbly-voiced flourish, full of pained head-shakes and ballerina-like arm-waves. ‘We can win!’ she yelled. ‘WE. MUST. WIN.’
‘Stop Brexit. And WIN. A. BRIGHTER. FUTURE.’
And with that, she stood arms stretched out wide and a beaming smile across her face.
She held the pose so long I thought she might suddenly burst into a little Julie Andrews twirl and start singing ‘The hills are alive with the sound of the Liberal Democrats.’
Verdict from female delegate next to me? ‘Well, at least she’s not a man in a grey suit.’ Quite so. But Britain’s next prime minister? NOT. A. CHANCE.