It’s not May v Boris that counts but May v Brexit
The conference introduces a new breed of MP reliant on ex-labour votes, with Rees-mogg at their head
Jacob Rees-mogg is a gent. I’m told that a banker was trying to get fresh with a young girl at a Tory conference reception and, sensing her distress, Jacob stepped in. “Is this man bothering you?” he asked. The lady was relieved and the banker slid away. Jacob is famous for facing down persistent nuisances.
Yet, at other times, he can seem almost anonymous. At a fringe event the next morning – cobbled together just to give Jacob a reason to speak – I found him hovering at the back of the room, unnoticed, chomping down Bourbon biscuits. We had an apolitical chat about Torquay; there’s never any hint of ego. Suddenly the cameras spotted him and he was mobbed like Greta Garbo. Like Corbyn, he must wonder why, after he’s been saying the exact same things for so many years, we’re all so obsessed with him now?
The Tories are at a turning point. Brexit lost them a lot of votes and seats, yes, but it gained them many new ones too, and the populism entering its ranks is changing the Conservative Party from within.
Theresa May hasn’t got the vision to see this. She’s a “one step at a time” kind of person, which at this conference means a) selling the Chequers deal and b) nobbling its number one critic, Boris Johnson.
She needn’t worry so much about the latter as I’d initially thought. Boris is still loved by many members here but he doesn’t do nearly enough to court them.
He’s only arriving at the conference today, two hangovers after it started, and if he wanted the votes of the grassroots you’d think he’d be at every meeting possible, pressing the flesh.
Instead yesterday he was miles away in Oxfordshire being photographed running through what looked like a wheat field. “Boris is old news”, someone important told me. In which case, what is new?
If you want to give a boring but safe answer you’d say Sajid Javid. He was supposed to be speaking at a think tank do but the chair said “sorry, the Home Secretary can’t make it” and three MPS walked straight out. So, yes, Sajid is the man of the moment – he’s got brains, experience and a backstory. But what he hasn’t got is a movement, and that’s everything in this new age of charismatic politics.
The thrilling, beating heart of this event is the Brexit rallies. The queue for one of them stretched around the conference centre. The speakers were a mix of old and new, and yes, some of them had campaigned against Maastricht in the Nineties. But what caught my eye was the showcasing of a fresh cohort that is younger, less southern, less posh.
Notable at this rally were Ben Houchen, mayor of Tees Valley, who looks and sounds like a docker, Ross Thomson, MP for Aberdeen South, and Andrea Jenkyns, who gave a leadership pitch that sunk like a lead balloon. A pity because she astutely listed the themes common to those newer MPS who are reliant on ex-labour voters drawn to the Conservatives by Brexit. Those being patriotism, sovereignty, industry and (you’d be amazed how often Brexiteers who live nowhere near the sea mention this) shipbuilding.
Finally, Conor Burns MP introduced not Boris – his former boss at the foreign office – but, yet again, Jacob Rees-mogg. Brexit, said the Moggatron, will help the poorest parts of the UK by cutting tariffs and immigration. Cheap food and rising wages, in the dreams of an emerging populist Right, wrap together economic and social conservatism in a package that can appeal to Newcastle as much as Somerset.
Brexiteers claim to be on the side of the common man, but are they really? Hmm. I’ve noticed that reporters tend to ask Jacob the wrong questions. They hound him about gay marriage and abortion, which voters regard as conscience issues and, if anything, they admire the man for being an authentic Christian. What journalists should pin Jacob down on is what he thinks about privatisation or welfare reform. He is what he looks like – a very rich Thatcherite.
Even at the most populist meetings at this conference, I’ve yet to hear the words “food banks” or “universal credit” or “austerity”. This leads one to suspect that the Brexiteers may have connected with the ex-labour working class on culture but have yet fully to embrace their world view on economics.
Ironically, it’s Mrs May who came closest to doing that when she was first elected Prime Minister and spoke of the “just managings”, the sort of rhetoric that got several Brexit-loving, Chequers-hating MPS elected in 2017. But then the Prime Minister lost her One Nation mojo and sunk back into just about managing her own party.
Not that the magic is entirely lost. At the same reception where Jacob played the white knight, Mrs May showed up in a sharp black dress to give an authoritative, well received speech. She’s in trouble but unlike Boris she is putting up a fight. And she looks rather sexy in black, too.
Am I allowed to say that any more? Don’t care. I just did.