Just another day in Crapland. It\u2019s amazing what you can get used to. You can\u2019t say the Tories haven\u2019t put a lot of thought into their party conference. It takes some programming skill to make every day even more dismal than the last. You come expecting very little and get even less.<\/p>\n
Schopenhauer would be in dreamland. The very act of being has never felt so inconsequential. Yet there\u2019s something very comforting about this. You leave the Birmingham theme park attraction feeling better about yourself than when you arrived. Who knew abject failure could be so much fun? You find yourself congratulating some members on being able to dress themselves. A curious hybrid of an endangered species and care in the community?<\/p>\n
You might find yourself wondering if you are being gaslit. Small pockets of people roaming around aimlessly with a smile on their face, insisting that it is very heaven in this dawn to be alive and repeatedly crossing themselves before images of the beatific Kemi Badenoch<\/a>. But then you realise that the people the Tories are really gaslighting are themselves. It\u2019s almost painful to watch. Almost. But mostly it\u2019s like a remake of The Truman Show. Everyone waking up each day and believing they are engaged in something meaningful. When the reality is nothing is happening. They are living in a Potemkin village. A series of distractions designed to look like a party conference.<\/p>\n The breakout star is, of course, Kemi. She is the Tories\u2019 chosen one. KULT KEMI. The leader who has rescued them from one black hole and is plunging them straight back into another. I\u2019ve come to realise I\u2019ve got Kemi wrong. Sure, she\u2019s short-tempered and can\u2019t tolerate dissent. But she\u2019s actually a supremely gifted entertainer. A comedy genius. A woman whose one-liners often get mistaken for serious comment. A female Jack Dee. She would be far more successful taking her show to the Edinburgh fringe than Birmingham.<\/p>\n KULT KEMI: Badenoch badges on sale at the Tory conference. Photograph: James McCauley\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n Kemi\u2019s act on the morning media round was one of her best yet. No one does improv better. Understandably, every interviewer wanted to ask her about the Tories\u2019 overnight announcement of a \u00a310bn Iron Dome to rival the Israelis\u2019 that would protect the UK from any kind of drone or missile attack. Like, how did she imagine she was going to build the Iron Dome for about a tenth of the money that all the experts said it would cost? And wasn\u2019t this just some bullshit nonsense designed to make the front pages of the Tory press that wouldn\u2019t stand contact with reality?<\/p>\n \u201cStop calling it an Iron Dome,\u201d Kemi dead-panned. She really is a comedy pro. Even at 8.10am she\u2019s still in role. \u201cIt isn\u2019t an Iron Dome. I\u2019ve never called it an Iron Dome. It\u2019s a Britannia Shield.\u201d Genius. She couldn\u2019t think for the life of her why everyone was calling it an Iron Dome. Mmm. It might have been something to do with the Tory press office releasing a statement calling it an Iron Dome? And the opinion piece in the Sun, written by Kemi herself, calling it an Iron Dome? There are clearly a lot of replicant Kemis rushing around pretending to be the real one.<\/p>\n OK, OK, we\u2019ll call it a Britannia Shield, said the radio and TV presenters. Sometimes it\u2019s easier to humour a guest. So when was it going to be operational, what would it look like and how much of the UK would it cover? Kemi laughed. She hadn\u2019t a clue. She was just the one with the ideas. The details she left for others. But it definitely would be up and running before Penny Mordaunt returned to parliament to reprise her role in Sky\u2019s The War Game<\/a>. As for the shield itself, that would be a few Sopwith Camel biplanes and barrage balloons that could be diverted to Scotland at a fortnight\u2019s notice if required.<\/p>\n