The day had begun with Robert Jenrick accused of racism. This is of course quite unfair. Racists believe in something. Some of us remember Jenrick as a chubby-cheeked fan of David Cameron fighting the Newark by-election. That was in the time when good Conservatives believed in Europe and the environment and the brotherhood of man. Now, well.
The Shadow Justice Secretary was speaking in the conference slot reserved for the Fantasy Alternative Leader. The time and place of the speech changes, but the job remains the same. For years it was Boris Johnson who would rock up and tickle Conservative tummies with a sniff of “here’s what you could have won”. In 2023 the gig went to Suella Braverman. Now it’s Jenrick’s.
He does it tremendously well, although had things gone differently last year, Kemi Badenoch would have been just as good. The Fantasy Alternative Leader, like a Fantasy Alternative Spouse, has every attractive quality and isn’t weighed down by poll ratings and defections. They wouldn’t leave their wet towel on the bathroom floor, and they wouldn’t give an interview in which they angrily asserted things that were known to be false.
What Jenrick would do, it turns out, is give an off-the-record lunch complaining about visiting parts of Britain where he didn’t see a white face. His comments about the Handsworth district of Birmingham had led the Guardian, and prompted quite a few questions in the morning broadcast interviews.
Badenoch, characteristically, told everyone that you couldn’t believe anything you read in the Guardian. The only way that this would make her look stupid was if there was a recording of Jenrick saying the words, clear as a bell.
After the BBC had played that recording to Jenrick, he complained that they had cut off the final part where, after complaining about the lack of white faces in Handsworth, he explained that he wasn’t making a point about skin colour. It was vile and mendacious for the BBC to suggest that, when he talked about the colour of people’s skin, he was making a point about race. Perhaps he’d just been saying it would be a bad place to open a tanning salon.
Why, the interviewer asked, if he wasn’t talking about race, had he talked about skin colour?
“It’s you that’s trying to misrepresent my comments,” Jenrick said. “I said that it was not about skin colour or faith. You did that to try and close down the debate. Because people like yourself for far too long have tried to make it difficult for politicians and members of the public to address these very issues. That has made these problems worse.” What issues are these? What problems? Was there something Jenrick wanted to say, or wanted some of us to hear?
“It was very clear to me there that in parts of that area it isn’t a very integrated community.” The council says the ethnicity of Handsworth is 25 per cent Pakistani, 23 per cent Indian, 10 per cent Bangladeshi, 16 per cent black, 10 per cent mixed and 9 per cent white. Which might suggest quite a lot of integration is going on. Or, if you’re on the Tory front bench, just sounds like a lot of not-white people. Jenrick didn’t explain why this was the fault of the not-white people who live in Handsworth, but it seems clear he feels it is.
“We all fundamentally know what we mean when we say British language, British culture,” Jenrick told the BBC. “British food.”
At least at the Conservative conference, he was unlikely to be confronted with a sea of non-white faces. Or indeed, given the attendance levels, any faces at all. He got a good turnout, but still didn’t fill the small hall. He did at least do better than the shadow home Secretary Chris Philp, who delivered a series of jokes to a hall so empty an unenthused that he gave a new meaning to “assisted dying”.
While Philp paced the stage chopping the air with his hands, Jenrick leaned on the lectern, scrunching up his face in concern. He denounced “fantasists masquerading as experts” and told us that “the people got it right.” Though not at the last election, obviously.
“For too long, the chattering classes drowned out the voice of the people,” he said. “Our voice, conference, is to make sure that the will of the people prevails.” Some people, anyway. Not the sort of people you see in Handsworth. Lord Hermer, the attorney general, was “a useful idiot.” At least he’s useful though, eh?
He had a box on stage which, to my great disappointment, didn’t contain a giant flag. Instead it was a judge’s wig, a prop for his announcement that in future, all judges will be free to believe whatever they want, so long as it’s the same thing as whatever Jenrick believes that week.
The audience loved it all. Full-fat Toryism, and at last they’d be allowed to say what they thought about Birmingham. “Let us see our land retain her soul, her pride, her freedom,” he said. “Every tide turns. And I can feel Britain’s fortunes turning. Let’s draw on Britain’s greatness. To make it greater still. Let’s fight for a better future. Let’s build this new order. Let’s take our country back.”
As Molly Ivins said of Pat Buchanan, it probably sounded better in the original German.
