Sketch: Johnson preaches to the converted

Boris Johnson in any normal scenario would be the perfect candidate to deliver a conference speech. He loves a crowd of supporters more than anyone, and knows how to work the room better than everyone.

But this year, despite his deft criticism of Labour, classic Johnson quips, and the general ease with which he brought the audience along with him, something felt off. Mired by personal controversies, under pressure to deliver the seemingly undeliverable Brexit, under fire from his parliamentary colleagues for his careless language, and the supreme court ruling against him, his levity felt misplaced.

Kicking things off Johnson thanked Theresa May’s husband Philip for his “patience” and “forbearance.” The subtlety of the not-actually-that-subtle coded insult really shouldn’t be lost on anyone. It’s probably for the best, then, that May was not in attendance but back in parliament, looking chummy with anti-Brexit and anti-Boris-Johnson Ken Clarke on the back benches.

The tag line of the conference – have you noticed? – is that the Tories have pledged to “get Brexit done.”

There it was again at the heart of the speech. “Let’s get Brexit done,” he said. “We can, we must and we will, even though things have not been made easier by the Surrender Bill.”

Just a week ago Johnson was confronted about his use of the term “Surrender Bill” – his description of the Benn Act that blocks no deal – by MPs concerned about death threats. He knew his audienc here, and felt no need to temper the language that got him into trouble in the first place. The crowd might have loved it, although it remains to be seen how that will play back at Westminster where he needs votes for his proposed Brexit deal.

The speech came with the usual digs at opposition, and Johnson is usually much better at it than his opponent Jeremy Corbyn. But last week Corbyn’s conference speech came hours after the supreme court ruling against Johnson’s attempted prorogation of parliament. Johnson had no such gift, but he still was agile in rattling off the deranged policy announcements – “damaging and retrograde” to use his words – Labour made last week.

“He wants a four-day week, which would slash the wages of people on low incomes; he wants to ban private schools and expropriate their property…”

That was Johnson’s strongest moment, promptly followed by his weakest, when he moved to the detail. He set out the basic skeleton of the offer he is making to the EU. It is understandable he didn’t want to dwell on it, both because it had already been pretty badly received by commentators in Dublin and Brussels, but also because paragraph upon paragraph about regulatory alignment and customs arrangements and general trading logistics are not often cause for great excitement.

But it was troubling that he couldn’t dive a little deeper on his Brexit policy. Perhaps he realises they were non-starters from the get go.

My takeaway, from both his proposition and his bare-bones mention of it in his speech, was that he’s not really after assent from the EU or Dublin anyway. Speaking to a room full of supporters, he wanted to look like he’s made a serious attempt at negotiation, and the EU have denied him.

“If we fail to get an agreement because of what is essentially a technical discussion of the exact nature of future customs checks… then let us be in no doubt that the alternative is no deal.”

If you want to get into the mindset of a fully paid up member of the Conservative Party then you should look no further than the crowd’s reaction to that moment. They whooped and cheered as Johnson essentially put his hands up and said “look, I’ve got some proposals and if they don’t like them then it’s not my fault.”

The problem is that a conference speech isn’t just about making friends with his fans already in the room. While a gaggle of young Tories seemed thrilled with the idea, the message won’t fly with the country.

He was sporadically funny, typically Johnsonian with one reference to an obscure Kremlin conspiracy (“the SNP may yet try to bundle him towards the throne like some Konstantin Chernenko figure”… me neither). But it was not an address that suggested this is a government with a strong grasp on what direction it is headed.

At a time when the stakes have never felt higher, when the prime minister’s popularity with some of his nervous parliamentary colleagues is faltering, he would have done well to adopt a touch more earnest tone – perhaps taking a page or two out of the playbook of his predecessor. But, that’s not what Boris has ever really been about. The attendees in Manchester left happy, but he’s got a lot more people to please than that.