QUENTIN LETTS: What a wig-lifter! This was the first properly spellbinding, dramatically assured speech seen at a conference for years
Predictable voices will hate it. But even they must admit that Sou’wester Sue was, as they say in twister corridor in Kansas, one heck of a blow.
What a wig-lifter of a speech. If Michael Fabricant was there, his topknot must have been blown all the way to Bolton.
Suella Braverman described an immigration ‘hurricane’ but she herself was a tornado making a determined path towards polite conventions, ripping elite etiquette from its moorings. The Establishment will be appalled. Tory activists (bar one) loved it.
The Manchester conference centre, a venue with all the charm of an aircraft carrier’s loading deck, was packed.
The representatives had just, with pleasure, heard a civilised speech from the youthful Lord Chancellor, Alex Chalk. Tall, tidy, a blush of peach to his cheeks, Mr Chalk insisted we could solve the small-boats problem ‘within our over-arching legal obligations’.
Suella Braverman (pictured Tuesday) described an immigration ‘hurricane’ but she herself was a tornado making a determined path towards polite conventions, ripping elite etiquette from its moorings
Mrs Braverman (pictured Tuesday) bared her pearlies at the crowd, as if demonstrating them to an equine dentist. Like most storms, it began quietly. She dryly observed that ‘I do occasionally receive a modicum of criticism’ and confirmed that she read what her critics wrote’
The hall overlooked that support for the European Convention on Human Rights and simply thought ‘what a lovely son-in-law he’d make’. At which point the barograph dropped, curtains billowed and the lights went off – but only so that we could watch a brief video about the next speaker.
We were shown Suella nodding in a green suit, Suella looking grave in a red suit, Suella surrounded by Union Jacks and Suella meeting some police chiefs who were very much sitting to attention.
Then the Home Secretary herself was in our midst, loping towards the lectern in dove-grey power suit and nude shoes, hair cascading over her shoulders.
Cheers. Hard clapping. A few people stood. A gent three rows in front of me was going nuts and she hadn’t yet said a word. Mrs Braverman bared her pearlies at the crowd, as if demonstrating them to an equine dentist.
Like most storms, it began quietly. She dryly observed that ‘I do occasionally receive a modicum of criticism’ and confirmed that she read what her critics wrote.
‘I’m made of strong stuff,’ she explained. ‘We listen, we learn, we renew ourselves.’
As she said that, she pushed her two hands upwards in the air and wriggled her long fingers. Could have been a doctor slipping on the latex gloves before asking a patient to drop his bags. I may not have been the only bloke to gulp audibly.
The world was being transformed by ‘powerful forces’ and the voters could see this even if Westminster could not. Unprecedented mass migration was reshaping the world.
‘The wind of change that carried my own parents across the globe in the 20th century was a mere gust compared to the hurricane that is coming.’ Wind of change: Harold Macmillan’s term presaged the end of Empire in the 1960s. Politically, ‘hurricane’ took us to a different part of the Beaufort scale. Those critics she mentioned will almost self-combust. They will denounce her as the next Enoch. Mrs Braverman was unapologetic.
She said we’d never be able to accommodate everyone who wanted to come here, even if we concreted over every field from Hull to Holyhead. Now came another triple: ‘I know it. You know it. And the voters know it.’
At this she leaned forward on the lectern and stared hard at the audience. No one dared even squeak. We were all terrified.
Bending forwards with her left knee and ripping arcs in the air with scarlet-varnished fingernails, she was using every actorly artifice. Never mind the content, this was the first properly spellbinding, dramatically assured speech seen at a conference for years.
Previous ministers had kept their contributions short and anaemic.
This was like watching Heseltine or Kinnock in olden days, a senior politician seizing opportunity.
A home secretary actually saying what she felt and thought? Aesthetes will be aghast. But isn’t it slightly what politicians are for? Isn’t it the whole point of party conferences? Mrs Braverman was aware of what was heading her way. Labour and ‘their allies in the third sector, some of whom openly declare that they oppose national borders on principle, bleat the same incessant accusation: Racist, racist, racist’.
They tried it with Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron but it had not worked then and it was not going to work against Rishi Sunak and against her.
A lone audience member started shouting dissent. According to a colleague he wailed ‘No, no, no’ before being led away by caring, syringe-toting attendants. He was last heard of heading for Kigali.
Back on stage, Britain’s most carnivorous Buddhist was serving up more red meat. There hasn’t been this much raw flesh seen since mammoth hunting was banned by one of the wetter Neolithic era governments.
Mrs Braverman (pictured Tuesday) was aware of what was heading her way. Labour and ‘their allies in the third sector, some of whom openly declare that they oppose national borders on principle, bleat the same incessant accusation: Racist, racist, racist’
Suella sank her formidable gnashers into wokery, the Human Rights Act, Just Stop Oil and more.
As each new foe was gnawed, you could almost hear that neeeeeeeawww of pine logs being fed into a sawmill. Sadiq Khan was a two-word insult. Sir Keir Starmer (‘our secret weapon’) was a mimsy knee-bender. The Tories, meanwhile, were ‘the trade union of the British people’.
Hello, is that the police? I’d like to report a pickpocket. That line was blatant pilfering of Tony Blair’s remark about Labour being the political wing of the British people. By now Suella was waging class war, attacking ‘luxury belief’ Lefties with second homes in Tuscany. Baby, she was smokin’.
She even cried that she didn’t care if paedos ‘complained that this is interfering with their human rights’ when she forbade them from changing their names after conviction. I half wondered if that might over-egg the cake mix but no, the crowd yelped with approbation.
And then the tornado passed. The curtains ceased flapping. Mrs Braverman closed almost with a whisper, quoting Shelley’s ‘rise like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number. Shake your chains like dew’.
Poetry after the tempest.
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