It’s hard to get excited about Boris’s futuristic plans when he’s been outfoxed by a spreadsheet

As a stand-up, I love a crowd, as does our Prime Minister. We’ve both missed playing to them. Boris Johnson’s conference speech yesterday was a rather bizarre affair. It was of course virtual, in a sterile room with a lectern, camera and no audience. It’s the equivalent of doing a comedy gig via Zoom, which is really tough, yet Johnson played it with big conference energy. He bounded in with freshly ruffled hair and I half-expected him to do that political trick of pretend-waving to people in the audience, except it would have just been poor Gary the cameraman, who would have had to wave back. Awkwardly.

This was not an easy speech to make. Leaders’ speeches never are. You have three audiences: the party faithful, public and press. When I worked for senior Labour politicians, we would start thinking about the big conference themes in August and spend weeks crafting the words. Given Labour’s stunning lack of recent success you may find that hard to believe, but trust me. As a former adviser, I sympathise with the speech-writing team having to deal with such a fast-moving pandemic which twists and turns every couple of hours.

Yet it didn’t feel like there was much frantic last-minute updating. This felt like a speech that had been written a long time ago about a distant future. But when Covid cases are on the rise, precious testing data has been lost and the country is worried sick about losing their jobs and businesses, talking about worthy but vague policy ambitions 10 years down the track felt odd. I’m a big fan of wind energy but when the Government has been outfoxed by an Excel spreadsheet it’s hard to get excited about grand futuristic plans. I’m old enough to remember Operation Moonshot.

This was a speech which should have focused on the British people and how they’re feeling . Which sought to reassure and to re-establish trust with a public who are confused, scared and want strong leadership. What we didn’t want was to be fat-shamed. We get that the Prime Minister has lost two stone and is well on the way to becoming a part-time Weight Watchers coach, but please don’t chub-rub it in. The most surreal passage in the speech was his vision of a future where only very thin people are allowed to bumble round the woods having picnics — presumably very small, low-carb ones.

The strongest theme in the speech was the plea from the Prime Minister to the party faithful not to dump him. BoJo booming “I’ve not lost my mojo” and offering to arm-wrestle any critics (ideally some north London liberal do-gooder) conjured up tragic images of me in about 10 years’ time drunk at Christmas going, “I used to be a right head-turner don’t you know” to my mortified niece and nephew. Actually, that happens now.

Then there was a tacit apology to the party for all the deeply unconservative things he’s had to do, like spending money and state intervention. He offered up the return of the hallowed small state. That was a morsel of red meat for fiscal Conservatives, but it also provided some cheer for Labour. It’s been discombobulating for the Left to see Boris Johnson deliver more socialism than Jeremy Corbyn could have ever dreamt of. If the Tories revert to talk of cutting back the state, that puts Keir Starmer on a much easier footing which it comes to attacking them. Yesterday’s speech failed to steady the ship, and was a cri de ceour from a Prime Minister who desperately wants, and needs, politics to return to business as usual. But that reality feels a galaxy away.