The slogan around the hall read “A country that works for everyone”. Though not for David Cameron. The Conservative party conference opened with a rather muted film tribute to the former prime minister, featuring shots of a a younger, happier Dave hugging a husky. There were a few claps but most of the audience shuffled in their seats and looked away. They had not come to Birmingham to be reminded of past embarrassments: they wanted to celebrate new triumphs. A brave new world with Britain firmly at the centre of it. A world where the EU bowed before the British Hush Puppy. The king is dead, long live the queen.
There are two ways of scheduling a party conference: either you space out your potential liabilities throughout the week or you have done with it and put most of them on together at the start. Theresa May went for the Snow White approach of putting three of her cabinet dwarves, Grumpy, Dopey and Happy, out first on a Brexit-themed day. The only minister missing was Liam Fox. Smarmy would have to wait for another day.
Just to make sure there were as few hiccups as possible, Snow White chose to put in an unexpected appearance at the top of the show. The message was clear. I’m in charge and if any of the clowns that follow do manage to go off Autocue and contradict me then there will be hell to pay. “Let me tell you, conference,” she began, “Brexit means Brexit.” Cue loud cheers from everyone. Remainers seem to have been banned from the conference.
“Brexit means we will escape the jackboot of European law with the great repeal bill. From now on, all EU law will become British law until some of it isn’t.” One thing Brexit certainly will mean is a field day for lawyers. “There is no choice between a hard Brexit and a soft Brexit,” Snow White concluded.
Well, there isn’t now, as she made it clear that a hard Brexit was the only Brexit on the table. We would be going into all negotiations determined to get whatever it was it turned out we wanted and, if we didn’t, the EU could just sod off. The single market; who cares?
Snow White’s words should have been music to David Davis’s ears, but Grumpy was even Grumpier than usual. Grumpy doesn’t like having his thunder stolen and is much more comfortable being the wronged outsider than actually being expected to do something constructive.
Grumpy had nothing really to add to anything Snow White had said, but he said it again anyway to fill up time. This wasn’t the barnstorming speech he had imagined the day before. “We just need to be positive in our thinking,” he said, grumpily. The key to Brexit was the Power of Grumpily Positive Thinking and Paul McKenna’s mind control.
Next up was Dopey. Priti Patel was not entirely sure why she had been lumped in to the Brexit session and Snow White had not had the heart to tell her it was because she was so boring and a bit dim and she had to be sneaked in somewhere. Dopey used her 15 minutes to pledge £750m to Afghanistan. “But don’t worry,” she added. “I’ve managed to cut it down from £1.5bn.” Dopey considers the brief of international development minister to be do as little as possible to anyone. Keep Britain’s money British and all that.
The last of the dwarves to appear was Happy. Boris Johnson only knows he’s alive when he’s got people laughing at his gags, so he began by telling a story making fun of the Russians. It went down well in the hall, but probably won’t go a long way to helping resolve the crisis in Syria. Happy then continued on the Snow White script. Britain just needed to be confident. Don’t listen to the “gloomadon poppers”. The rest of the world needed Britain far more than we needed them. Foreigners were basically a bit thick and useless compared with us and Britain was singlehandedly responsible for everything good that had ever happened anywhere. Don’t worry about a thing. The world loves us and owes us a living. The world may not see it that way but it made Happy happy.
