The main thing to say about Boris Johnson’s speech at this year’s online Tory conference is that it captures the present mood of the Conservative party almost perfectly. The problem with that is, that mood is one of confusion and soul searching about what the Conservative party actually exists to do.
For a start, there is a need to address the topic of Boris’s missing mojo. This has been talked about to death, and so I will only say that complaints that he wasn’t at his shiny best are a little unfair. He didn’t have a crowd to feed off of today, which in and of itself took the speech’s energy levels down several notches. Also, he’s the prime minister at a time of national crisis. Expecting him to be the buoyant life and soul of the party at this moment is odd to say the least. Part of why the Boris of today isn’t the Boris of old is due to understandable events.
Too much of Boris Johnson’s speech today belonged to the reality Boris wants to live in, not the one that we actually inhabit at present
Yet there is still much to criticise in the speech.
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