Vampire of the spirit Philip Hammond takes dullness to a whole new level
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Version 0 of 1. Lurch dragged himself towards the lectern. Even with extra slap to give his cheeks a pink veneer, Philip Hammond has the look of a walking corpse. His eyes are sunken sockets, his stooped frame the sign of a man destined to be a pall-bearer at his own funeral. The chancellor has already bored himself to death many times over and he won’t rest until he has sucked the lifeblood out of everyone around him. A true vampire of the spirit. “Thank you,” said the chancellor, raising a hand to acknowledge the polite applause that had greeted his arrival. If Lurch had left it at that, his speech would have gone down as one of his biggest triumphs. But he had more to say. Much more. And the Tory conference settled down for a painful dose of aural valium. On a couple of occasions, he tried to make a joke but he fluffed the punchline both times. Even the Autocue had had enough. This wasn’t the easiest of gigs for Lurch. All his instincts – along with those of the City – tell him Britain should be pursuing the softest of Brexits, but he’s been outflanked by the Eurosceptics and will now have to steer the economy through what may well be a tricky few years. Already the pound was falling sharply and he’d long since had to ditch his party’s promise of eliminating the budget deficit by 2020. One panicky eye opened and peered out through a hooded lid. “There will be some turbulence as a result of Brexit,” he warned. Put on your seatbelts and assume the brace position. Lurch would do his best to make things OK, but he wasn’t making any promises. “Before you switch off ... ” he continued. It was a bit late in the day for that as most people had long since zoned out. But Lurch wasn’t a man to be put off by the sound of shallow breathing, so he plodded on. “I had no idea until a few weeks ago how much I didn’t know,” he continued. Better late than never. “And even less idea how much I wouldn’t be able to understand even once it had been explained to me.” This chancellor business was a bit trickier than he had been led to believe. Another “Thank you” indicated that Lurch had reached the end of his monologue and the applause was a touch warmer than it had been when he had walked on. Mainly due to everyone’s relief at being put out of their misery, but also partly in appreciation. It takes a lifetime of practice to be that dull. Dullness is often an underrated virtue in a politician – it’s often confused with being a safe pair of hands – and Hammond has turned it into an art form. If the morning was spent trying to persuade people that things wouldn’t be quite as bad as they feared, the afternoon was all about showing how much worse things could so easily have been. In a parallel universe, Andrea Leadsom could have been the prime minister and the warmth of her reception was all about the bullet that had been dodged. Leadsom’s grip on reality has always been tenuous at best – she’s still not entirely sure whether she was a cashier at NatWest or a lift attendant at Barclays – and her grasp of her brief as minister for the environment, food and rural affairs is minimal. “There’s lots of badgers to kill and the countryside has inspired lots of pop songs,” she declared. Then she smiled. Leadsom does a lot of smiling. It gives her a chance for her words to resynch themselves with her lips. Then she smiled again. Just because she could. “Tourists are buying British bottled air at £80 a go,” she declared, as if ripping off gullible foreigners was the answer to the country’s problems. She had nothing to say about contaminated meat or what was going to happen to the farmers she’d persuaded to leave the EU once their subsidies ran out. Above her pay grade. Smiling was so much easier. That and crossing the globe, flying the flag, banging the drum and mouthing platitudes. She was followed on to the stage by Liam Fox, whom the Tories considered to be an even worse bet than her as party leader. Imagine how that must make him feel. |