Quote of the day
Boris Johnson: “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.”
Row of the day
The equivalent of the heavyweight world title: Theresa May v Boris Johnson. Opening shots were fired with pictures on the morning front pages of Johnson running through a field of wheat – a poke at the PM’s “naughtiest moment”. May conceded the event would be “lively”.
Unlike his support act Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has been playing all the small venues, Johnson had the one arena appearance, with a rock-star welcome from the party faithful, at the ConHome event.
He attacked the prime minister’s plan for Brexit as “dangerous and unstable – politically and economically”, and his cry of “chuck Chequers” won at least 20 seconds of applause. “This is not democracy. This is not what we voted for. This is an outrage,” he said.
Appearance of the day
Shortly before Johnson’s speech, Rees-Mogg showed the former foreign secretary there was another hugely popular hard-Brexit act in town, packing out a fringe event to detail his own dislike of the Chequers plan.
This was very much Rees-Mogg’s standard speech, honed by numerous fringe events not to mention his punishing year-round schedule of appearances at local party associations, and it went down a storm.
In terms of content, the only new elements were his claim that many cabinet ministers secretly favour his so-called super-Canada alternative to Chequers, and his assertion that any more concessions to the EU would be “an utter disgrace”.
But many in the crowd were also there for the very polished and generally self-deprecating jokes, which included an anecdote about his eight-year-old son worrying where his father would get supplies of claret after Brexit, and a story about visiting the National Archives ending with: “Luckily they agreed to let me out at the end.”
Tweet of the day
Today at the Conservative Conference the Immigration Minister is building a wall pic.twitter.com/jtAdkT8Z7z
— Peter Henley (@BBCPeterH) October 2, 2018
Wednesday’s highlight
It’s May’s speech late in the morning, and the prime minister will have a low bar to jump in order to do better than her anxiety-dream of a speech last year.
Expect a joking reference to that address – in which she lost her voice, the set fell down and she was handed a P45 by a prankster – as well as bullish defence of her Chequers plan, which Johnson attempted to demolish 24 hours in advance.
Immigration was tipped to be the highlight of the speech but that policy was comprehensively briefed into the papers on Tuesday, in an attempt to drown out Johnson, and was fleshed out by Sajid Javid, the home secretary, so many observers will be hoping May has something else of interest up her sleeve.
