Boris must deliver on his vision or Manchester could be his Peterloo

Party conferences are not only for the benefit of the party in question, though the parties they throw there most certainly are — as well as for thirsty journalists. These seemingly vainglorious and faintly ridiculous events have their place in the national calendar because, like a television ad break or a theatre interval, they give the audience a chance to appraise, criticise and ask one another: how was the show so far?

The Conservative Party Conference that opens in Manchester today is no exception. Some may wonder what the point of the speeches and interviews and Bollinger-swilling is, at a time when the Army is driving tankers instead of tanks so that the rest of us can at least half-fill our own tanks and stop the economy tanking. But there may be a ray of sunshine for the rainy city. At last the party faithful will physically meet the Red Wall Tories they have heard so much about, not in Westminster but on their home turf. Their new friends from the North can be relied on to tell them what “levelling up” would mean — and what it wouldn’t.

So far there has been little to puncture the hot air balloon of confidence that has transported the Tories to Manchester. True, the Prime Minister was ambushed by Andrew Marr, who wanted to know what he was going to do about the slaughter and incineration of hundreds of thousands of pigs due to a reported lack of manpower in abattoirs. Boris, looking nonplussed, reached for his classical lexicon and questioned whether there would actually be any porcine “hecatombs”. He could hardly resist making a joke out of it, telling his impatient interviewer that slaughtering pigs — lots of them — was what slaughterhouses do. Marr, who will not be mocked, shut him up and moved on.

Will this exchange, which is already being spun as a display of callous disregard for the suffering of pigs notoriously highly intelligent creatures, derail the Tory express? Perhaps not. Thanks in part to the influence of Carrie Symonds (now Mrs Johnson), the PM has a deserved reputation for a consistent, though pragmatic, concern for animal welfare. Not one but two Government Bills on the subject, dealing with sentience and live transport respectively, are making their way through Parliament. It will take more than a Sunday morning skirmish to cast the Prime Minister as an ogre and turn animal lovers into Boris-haters.

There will be announcements galore to take our minds off present woes, beginning with a promise to source all electricity in the UK from “clean” energy (renewables and nuclear) by 2035. This, the PM will assure us, should insulate the nation from volatile gas prices, help to decarbonise the economy and save the planet. The only trouble is that 2035 seems a long time to wait. Airy promises of carbon-free electricity in the distant future don’t help ordinary people who are, for now, largely dependent on fossil fuels, have rising bills to pay and may just have been told that their supplier has gone bust.

The coming months, as I wrote here ten days ago before everyone else picked up the theme, will be a winter of discontent, especially for those trapped in poverty and facing the end of state support for jobs and welfare during the pandemic. But we are all at the mercy of inflation and most of us will be hit by tax rises, of which the new (and regressive) National Insurance (NI) contribution to pay for the NHS and social care is only the first.

So it would be unwise for the Tory big beasts to sound triumphalist, however much they may feel it. The latest polls have them comfortably ahead of Labour, after a wobble a few weeks ago due to the impact of the NI hike. Barring accidents — which can always happen at party conferences — they will go home on Wednesday with (renewable) fire in their bellies. Labour’s seaside antics in Brighton last week barely registered with the public. But the cost of living will, and increasingly so as the winter closes in.

Lidl Tories, the pollsters’ latest creation, know the price of everything and set the value of promises at nothing. The PM will tell them that Brexit was about higher wages and productivity, with a better-skilled workforce instead of cheap foreign labour. Boris had better deliver on this vision of a more prosperous people in a fairer country, or we may one day look back on the 2021 Manchester conference as the moment when he met his Peterloo.

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