Boris may have drawn the crowds while the PM got a laugh for her Dancing Queen routine, but it was Geoffrey Cox QC who comfortably stole the show at Tory Conference this year.
He was only supposed to be May’s warm-up act, but the new Attorney General’s uproarious speech had the crowd completely enraptured as he strode around the stage booming out the benefits of Brexit. Forget Mogg Mania, now everyone is Crazy for Cox…
“Thank you very much for that warm welcome.
You’ll have to excuse me if I cough during this speech; I’ve been up all night supergluing the backdrop.
There are some things about last year’s conference I have tried to forget.
But I will always remember the warmth I felt from everyone in the hall.
You supported me all the way – thank you.
Eager punters have been queuing round the block for hours ahead of Boris’ big speech at Tory Conference, with an extra tier being opened up to take the hall to its full capacity of 1,500. Here’s what they heard Boris say:
“Good afternoon my friends and fellow ConHomers.
It is great to be here in Birmingham where so many thoroughfares in the city are already named after our superb Conservative Mayor. I know this conference is going to be a staggering success because just in the last couple of days about a dozen far left momentum activists have kindly pledged their loyalty by ringing my private mobile phone. I put them straight on to Brandon.
Remainers resorted to guerrilla tactics in their attempts to disrupt Leave Means Leave’s packed fringe rally, with an EU flag pyjama-clad protester wheeling a portable sound system into position right outside the event room. The musical talents of the self-proclaimed ‘EU Supergirl’ were unleashed at a sufficiently deafening volume to bring the entire event to a halt. That’s one way of getting people to listen to your songs…
Fortunately for the organisers, none other than Leave Means Leave co-chair Richard Tice was on hand to use all his renowned eloquence and charm to politely persuade the protester to turn the music off. He even apologises before sheepishly walking off. Tice as nice…
The new Foreign Secretary has launched into a spirited defence of Brexiteers at the start of Tory Conference and even compared the EU to the USSR:
“At the moment you, European friends, seem to think the way to keep the club together is to punish a member who leaves, not just with economic disruption, but even by breaking up the United Kingdom with a border down the Irish Sea…
“The EU was set up to protect freedom – it was the Soviet Union that stopped people leaving. The lesson from history is clear – if you turn the EU club into a prison, the desire to get out of it won’t diminish, it will grow, and we won’t be the only prisoner that wants to escape…”
This is remarkably punchy rhetoric, particularly given that Hunt was calling for a second referendum after the vote in 2016. It’s impossible not to see this through the prism of leadership – it looks a clear bid to win over the party’s pro-Brexit base. Probably isn’t going to go down so well in Brussels and Berlin…
Bit of an oops on the front cover of the Conservative Party Conference brochure, where multiple fonts appear to have been used for the dates. Disunited fonts for a disunited party…
