Vintage boris is making a comeback | thearticle

In the lead up to the Prime Minister taking office, it was rumoured that Boris was going to “change his style” when he got into Number 10. And aesthetically, at least, he did: he lost some

weight, got a sensible haircut, and experimented with sombre, well-cut suits. But, as his conference speech proved, the changes were very superficial indeed. What we saw today was thoroughly

vintage Boris, thinly disguised in a swanky new outfit. Like a particularly bold broadsheet newspaper column, the speech was heavy on exciting policy proposals – and light on detail. On the

roll-out of gigabit broadband, he merrily admitted he didn’t quite understand the specifics, but painted a bold and brilliant image in the mind of “particularly connective vermicelli”

wiggling its way into homes across the country. He seemed unafraid, too, of bouncing between ideas: the jump from infrastructure projects in space to a cure for blindness was so rapid that

his audience barely had time to digest the extreme ambition of either proposal. For journalists trying to write a list of bullet points on what the Prime Minister plans to do in the next few

months – or cabinet ministers looking for concrete evidence that he will invest some money/time/attention in their departments – it won’t have been particularly helpful. But for members of

the public looking to get a flavour of what this administration will be like once Brexit is out of the way, it was illuminating. The speech also signalled that the Prime Minister is keen to

extend an olive branch to his old friends in the centre of the party. Talk of the “Party of the NHS”, “One Nation Conservative Government” and “Party of Capitalism” was clearly designed to

appeal to (ex) Conservatives like David Gauke, who passionately believe in free-market conservatism and fiscal responsibility, but don’t share Boris’s views on Brexit. Taken with James

Cleverly’s statement last night that rebel MPs who were kicked out of the Conservative parliamentary party could be offered a “road to redemption” back into the fold, it can be interpreted

as a sign that the Boris administration is softening. But what really made the speech stand out was the jokes. They came thick and fast, and ranged from vaguely risqué (he suggested it would

have been satisfying to watch John Bercow eat a kangaroo testicle) to self-deprecating (“I like to make and paint inexact models of buses”). On Twitter, left-wing commentators virtually

shook their heads in censorious disapproval (“not exactly prime ministerial”) but the hall was loving it, and quite possibly it struck the right note for the politically engaged public. In

the privacy of our own homes, a good deal of Brits are irreverant, and automatically rail against anyone who takes themselves too seriously. Boris very clearly is not one of those people. In

short, the whole thing was “classic Boris”. It showed a man unafraid to think on his feet with charisma, optimism – but a rather sketchy plan. If you liked him already, you’ll like him more

now. And if you didn’t, your mistrust will almost certainly have deepened.