On paper, bringing on the attorney general as the surprise warm-up act for the prime minister might have seemed like an odd choice. But 20 minutes later, in a booming speech peppered with Milton and the Rolling Stones, delighted Tory delegates were cheering to the rafters.
As Geoffrey Cox, the £500,000-a-year part-time barrister strode across the stage, reporters quipped he must have been expensive.
The extraordinary speech, delivered in an oratory style variously compared to Brian Blessed, Tom Baker and Terry Wogan, left few in doubt about how Cox had convinced many an Old Bailey jury.
He urged his audience of restless Tories not to squander the “precious prize” of Brexit through internecine warfare. “Brexit is based on hope, not fear. We need not fear self-government,” he said.
Cox came to prominence after an impromptu strident defence of the prime minister’s Chequers plan to journalists waiting in a sweaty corridor outside the 1922 committee of backbenchers, in the hours following Boris Johnson’s resignation. Within 24 hours, he had been promoted to the cabinet.
In the speech on Wednesday, his first in a conference hall, he again extolled the virtues of Brexit as a route to sovereignty, leaning forward over the podium and delivering Areopagitica with a flourish.
“Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks,” he roared. “Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam.”
The delivery made such an impression, the prime minister ad-libbed a reference to her colleague in her own speech, joking that should she lose her voice like last year, “I could just ask to borrow the voice of Geoffrey Cox.”
