‘Boris Johnson’s speech was a deeply odd, tin-eared, hallucinatory, beaver dream’ – Mikey Smith

If I understood Boris Johnson’s speech properly, we’re going to give beavers £3,000 to build Northern Powerhouse rail

Well, that was weird.

If I understood Boris Johnson’s speech properly, we’re going to give beavers £3,000 to build Northern Powerhouse rail.

Covid is all fine now, he indicated, urging attendees to fist-bump each other despite masks and vaccinations being optional at this conference, and about as fashionable as red trousers are in the rest of the country.

And don’t worry about all these pigs getting incinerated because we’ve sent a few steaks to the States and sausages to the “far east” on an aircraft carrier for some reason.

The scorched swines didn’t get a mention in the PM’s mercifully brief address.

Nor did the £20 cut to Universal Credit, which kicked in a few hours before Johnson went on stage at his personal vanity arena.

This whole conference has existed in a weird hallucinatory bubble – a beaver dream, if you will.

Within these walls, Liz Truss is a legit celebrity, gin and tonics cost £13 and the most pressing debate in the country is about whether or not exercise bikes are woke. Or something like that. It was so obviously nonsense I didn’t really pay attention.

There’s been very little discussion of the fuel crisis gripping every street of the nation outside this particular postcode.

It’s like the pandemic that’s still infecting 33,000 new people a day never happened, as party faithful kiss, hug and swap fluids with abandon.

And the big policy announcement of bung to teachers turned out to be broadly the same as one that was quietly wound down last year, only less generous.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the emotional climax of Tory conference was not Johnson’s half-hearted, tin-eared, unmemorable after dinner speech, but footage of the minister responsible for the Universal Credit cut singing “Time of My Life” at 2am.

It was a moment so catastrophically misjudged that you’ve got to wonder whether Therese Coffey thought the Conference bubble kept information in as well as out.

But never mind. At least those left with a choice of heating or eating as the nights draw in can kill two birds with one stone by turning up to their local porky pyre with a plate.