PM says the NHS is ‘in his blood’ – he should get tested for sepsis

Remember last year’s CBI conference, when Boris lost his place in his speech and riffed on Peppa Pig? I miss Peppa. And I miss Boris. For the annual gathering of garden centres and yoghurt makers has become unfunny and downhill, more Eeyore than Piglet.

Rishi Sunak, the star-turn, was introduced by a video entitled “Go for Growth”. A team of joggers pushed on through the pain-barrier; a disembodied woman whispered that things aren’t as awful as they first look. “There are still good things to invest in,” she said. “Demand’s not bad.”

And you could always win the lottery, which is a safer bet nowadays than opening a business. Were that video a realistic depiction of our present economy, half the joggers would be off sick or on strike, and the rest would be hurdling over idiots glued to the pavement. Consider this: post-brexit, we are behind a tariff barrier. The CBI and the Treasury would like to align closer to the EU; the Prime Minister, knowing it would split the Tory Party, told the audience it’ll never happen. Fine. But if we’re not going to go down the Swiss-style path then the logical alternative is to cut UK taxes and regulation – yet this, too, has been taken off the table in the name of stability. “More important than what the Government does is what you do,”

You could always win the lottery, which is a safer bet nowadays than opening a business

Rishi explained, which is lucky because the Government has decided to do sweet Football Association about our decline into Third World status, having redefined Conservatism as “doing nothing, very slowly”.

The Budget was “empathetic”, said the PM, as if Jeremy Hunt had given the poor a blow-dry, and asked after their mum, and for a sense of his own principles, he pointed to furlough (when he paid us to sit at home and watch Diagnosis Murder). “I grew up in an NHS family,” he continued, “it is in my blood.” Given the standards of our hospitals, one would recommend he immediately gets tested for sepsis.

Our only hope is the robots. Rishi unveiled a plan to bribe the world’s 100 greatest experts in AI to move to Britain – it would be cheaper to follow North Korea’s lead and kidnap them – in a bid to turn us into a robotic superpower. But computers are not all they’re cracked up to be, as anyone who has spent 30 minutes trying to persuade a self-service checkout that they only scanned one tin of bins will tell you – and staffing our factories with Metal Mickeys might satisfy bosses who would prefer not to pay human beings, but what happens when they gain self-consciousness and demand to elect their own Prime Minister?

Sometimes, I suspect it’s already happened. When Rishi smiles, I hear the Apple start-up sound.

At the end of his speech, the head of the CBI, Tony Danker, told the PM: “You could be a chief executive. You’re wasted in this job!” Well Tony, give it 18 months and Rishi might be available – ready to do for Bostik or Specsavers what he’s done for Britain.