Very funny PM... but seriously, now deliver
IN THE brutal assessment of one commentator: “If optimism and humour could heat our homes we’d be fine, but actually they don’t.” And he was right. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s speech to his party’s faithful in Manchester last week at times resembled an open-mic night at your local comedy club – but you have to wonder if he was aware that many up and down the country are not in the mood for laughing just now.
No one needs reminding that what are called “optics” in politics are key.
And being seen to be blasé about strife and crisis – or blandly dismissing it – can be akin to treading on a landmine.
If in any doubt, study what happened to tone-deaf former Labour prime minister Jim Callaghan when he comprehensively failed to grasp the impact of the Winter of Discontent crisis in 1978.
So having seen queueing – and even fighting – for petrol, particularly in the South, rapidly emptying supermarket shelves across the country, fuel firms collapsing, energy prices soaring, all of us looking nervously at our thermostats and inflation at around double the rate it’s supposed to be, the wisdom of a string of gags about everything from beavers to Cruella de Vil and Christopher Columbus to Michael “Jon Bon” Govey can be questioned.
Don’t get me wrong, I laughed out loud at many of them and enjoyed the upbeat mood and rapid delivery enormously.
Having been in Manchester for nearly four days among people who don’t just eat, sleep and drink politics, they actually book their holidays so they can attend these weird and wonk-fuelled affairs, the joie de vivre served up was like quaffing the finest Pol Roger champagne.
And compared to a previous Conservative prime minister’s efforts, you had to question if the two were actually from the same species.
Where poor Theresa May’s performances had a collapsing set, a coughing fit and some painful moves to Dancing Queen, Boris was the veritable king of his domain, surveying his adoring masses. And that is another key to what the PM delivered.
A conference is a weird hybrid: There’s the love bombing of party workers, who will now canvass, leaflet and raise funds with joy in their hearts and a spring in their step as they replay Boris’s bravura bout of boosterism (see Prime Minister, we can all do alliteration!).
But it is also seized upon by the media because of the access it affords to the top team.
That is why, doing all this on the very same day the temporary uplift in Universal Credit of £20 a week was halted was puzzling.while the rise was always meant to be a temporary move and it had to be stopped at some point, quite why it had to be on the day of the PM’S speech is bewildering.
Despite the barnstorming brio and pledge to “unleash the spirit” of the nation – all of which is Viagra to these swooning Tories – there was still no rational explanation of what “levelling-up” actually means and just as importantly, how it is to be judged at the end of this parliamentary term if it has been achieved. That has to be worked out over the next 12 months. The huge majority Mr Johnson enjoys is because he was “loaned” so many Labour votes north of the infamous Redwall.
But these are canny folk. If all they see is soaring costs, empty shelves and pay hit by inflation, they’ll call in the loan quicker than a bank on a defaulted mortgage.
After the past 18 months, we needed the rousing, robust and sometimes rib-tickling Boris, of that there is no doubt. But as the laughter fades away, consider this: Boris, we know where you stand... now deliver.
IT’S difficult to see why some senior Conservatives are smarting over poll findings that label them as no longer being the party of low taxation.
Can someone remind them we are now suffering the highest level of taxation since the Second
World War?
Add in that Corporation Tax is soon to rise to 25 per cent and businesses are at loggerheads with them over the Government’s claim bosses were hooked on cheap labour and need to start paying decent wages, and it’s easy to see why some are seeing red with the blue army of the Tories.