Boris Johnson’s Tory predecessors tried to add pizzazz to their conference speeches by declaiming them while striding up and down without notes, or in Theresa May’s case, bopping on to the platform to Abba’s Dancing Queen.
But without the buzz of a live audience to perform to, Johnson went for the more traditional approach of shuffling through the pages of a printed script – on which, aides say, he likes to scrawl last-minute changes.
When he appears at prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons, Johnson’s notes often include a small photo of the backbench MP whose query he is due to answer, in an attempt to help him create a personal note.
Without an audience, he was left instead to direct his upbeat promise to rebuild Britain beyond Covid straight into the camera and press on immediately after making jokes, instead of waiting for Conservative members to collapse into guffaws.
Despite his brush with coronavirus, Johnson arguably sounded healthier than May during her 2017 conference speech, when she coughed incessantly, was handed a fake P45 by a comedian and ploughed on while the lettering fell off the conference backdrop.
Afterwards, as the audience rose to applaud May – not least because they were glad the ordeal was over - television cameras captured then home secretary, Amber Rudd, ordering Johnson, sitting next to her in the front row, to “get up!”.
The following year, May was comprehensively overshadowed by Johnson, who had resigned as foreign secretary and swept in to the Birmingham conference centre to deliver a packed-out speech trashing her Brexit plan.
And last year, in Manchester, Johnson’s first speech as leader was frequently interrupted with bursts of applause, and peppered with jokes, including a promise to blast “communist cosmonaut” Jeremy Corbyn into space. A pre-election, pre-Covid crowd-pleaser – from a different age.
