Two years ago the Tory party election campaign started to fall apart after the launch of the manifesto on a Thursday in Halifax. This time round, the Conservatives were determined to make sure that didn’t happen again by choosing a Sunday for their launch. A day when almost everyone would either be watching football, Sir David Attenborough or Countryfile. Anything to get away from the election for at least 24 hours. A day when any car crash would pass more or less unnoticed.
Just before 2pm the entire cabinet – needy Matt Hancock bouncing up and down excitedly and taking selfies to try to reassure himself he really did exist – trooped in to the main hall of the Telford International Centre and took their seats in the front row. Well not quite all the cabinet. There was no sign of Jacob Rees-Mogg who has been locked in solitary ever since he insisted that those who had died in the Grenfell fire had got what they deserved for being too stupid not to disobey instructions. One upside to this election is that we should all be seeing a lot less of the Moggster in the next parliament.
Then a bemused James Cleverly took the stage to say he didn’t really have anything much to say. Sadly Cleverly isn’t bright enough to realise that the only reason he had been chosen to introduce the event is because he is at his best when he doesn’t have anything to say. It’s when he tries to pretend he knows something that he comes unstuck. Cleverly sat down to a huge ovation for having said precisely nothing. Mission accomplished.
Isolated cries of “Bo-Ris, Bo-Ris” broke out from isolated pockets in the room as the prime minister bumbled his way to the front. After tugging his hair to make sure it was sufficiently artfully messed up – there is no beginning to his vanity – Boris Johnson raised his arms for silence. Then as he began to speak, it became clear that the Tories had decided to double down on their no-cock-ups Sunday launch by delivering a manifesto with almost nothing in it. After all, no one can tear apart an empty manifesto. Genius. Politics at its most meta. Classic Dom.
So what we got was Classic Boris. A lazy, second-rate standup routine that would have been booed off stage at a newcomers’ open mic night at a comedy club just down the road. Stolen gags that were tired even in the 1970s, plenty of familiar abuse directed at Labour and Jeremy Corbyn and the same old, same old lies. Amazingly he never seems to tire of this. In his narcissistic bubble, his reflection – and Matt Hancock – fall about laughing at his comedic and improv genius.
Johnson started off with his usual shtick of “Get Brexit Done”. More accurately known as Get Brexit Don’t. He is totally unaware both that no one did more to make sure that Theresa May’s Brexit deal did not get through the Commons than him or that his deal is one that he himself rejected 18 months previously. His denial is so complete he has blanked out the need to negotiate a free trade agreement with the EU within six months. All that matters is winning the election. Breaking promises and letting people down can start on 13 December.
During the ITV live leaders debate on 19 November, the Conservative party re-branded their press office account on Twitter as 'factcheckUK', to tweet anti-Corbyn points during the programme to its 75,000 followers.
On Twitter accounts there is a username - in this case @CCHQpress - and a screen name, which appears more prominently. The Conservatives changed the screen name to 'factcheckUK', and also changed the logo and biography of the account to read 'fact checking Labour from CCHQ'.
No explicit mention of the Conservative party name in full was made, so users would have to know that CCHQ is an acronym for 'Conservative campaign headquarters' in order to understand who was providing the fake fact-checking service.
Because the @CCHQPress account on Twitter is 'verified', it means when it appears it has a blue check mark next to the name, to show that Twitter has 'verified' that the account is who it says it is. This was retained while the account was tweeting under the false name 'factcheckUK'.
Martin Belam
What followed was mostly just filler. He would be building the 40 hospitals that would never be built. There would be 50,000 new nurses, providing the 20,000 nurses he wouldn’t deport were included in the headline figure. There would be £2bn for potholes and £1bn for childcare. Because one child was worth half as much as one pothole. He’d do something about social care though the details temporarily escaped him. And he could promise all this was true because it had been ruthlessly audited by a bunch of twenty-somethings in CCHQ who were running FactCheckUK.
The closest he came to telling the truth was admitting that equality of opportunity was not distributed evenly. Because if it was, then someone like Boris would never have become prime minister. Without his privilege and overbearing sense of entitlement, Johnson would be just another low rent grifter, hawking fake brand goods out of a suitcase on Oxford Street. He ended with a lame Franglais ramble about the shadow cabinet that ended with a dig at “Madame Abbott”. That got the biggest cheer of the day. Tory activists love a bit of dog-whistle racism. No one can say that Boris doesn’t understand his audience.
Once the applause had died down, Johnson nervously took a few questions. His bumper hamper of non-existent giveaways would be funded by a Brexit dividend that would make the country significantly poorer. “Can people trust you?” was met with an answer that contained at least three lies. Sadly he can be trusted. To almost never tell the truth. Nor could he explain the fake news campaign at CCHQ. A complete mystery. “I don’t really understand the Twittersphere,” he said sadly, lapsing into total incoherence. I guess that must have been one of Jennifer Arcuri’s IT lessons he failed to learn.
“That’s all folks,” Johnson burbled, while everyone was still trying to take in the fact that he hadn’t really said much. All was well. The manifesto had been launched. Now it need never be mentioned again. Onwards and sideways to victory.
John Crace’s new book, Decline and Fail: Read in Case of Political Apocalypse, is published by Guardian Faber. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.
