David Cameron may have just made history as the first Tory leader to include sexual innuendo in a conference speech. Twice. On neither occasion did he mention pigs. The passage targeting Jeremy Corbyn’s economic guru, Richard Murphy, featured a plug for Murphy’s book, The Joy of Tax, the title echoing that of 1972’s The Joy of Sex. “I’ve read it,” the PM said. “It’s got 64 positions – and none of them work.”
As he delivered that one, the camera cut to Samantha Cameron. Her smile can only really be described as “thin”.
The PM then praised Boris Johnson, but departed from the script to recall their rugger days at Eton. “I was a hooker,” he announced, to titters. “And that is a factual statement, not a chapter of Michael Ashcroft’s book.”
Yes, he said “Michael Ashcroft” – not “Lord Ashcroft”. The battle William Hague fought to secure a peerage for the Conservative billionaire bankroller has come to this.
• Rachel Johnson, Boris’s sister, told LBC how, finding her feeling depressed by Theresa May’s tirade against immigrants, a Tory MP said, “Don’t worry. Tuesday of conference – it’s always National Front day.”
• Another vignette from Charles Moore’s Thatcher biography. The story of party chairman, Cecil Parkinson and his pregnant ex-lover, Sara Keays, was first forced into the open by Private Eye. For some reason The Eye implicated Tory MP Marcus Fox. Ms Keays, they claimed, “had only recently returned from exploring the jungles of Uganda” with Fox.
Ugandan references are Private Eye slang for sexual intercourse, but nobody explained that to a furious Margaret Thatcher, who waved the magazine at her ministers and declared. “I know it’s untrue. Marcus told me he’s never visited Africa!”
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