Honest Bob gets the party started – the Reform party. It’s tough being a Tory | John Crace

If Andy Burnham hadn’t already made an appearance – why stop at leading Labour when you can also lead the Tories? – then Robert Jenrick would definitely qualify as the Conservative party conference’s very own Andy. The unwanted guest at the wedding. The man who turns up at every fringe. Flutters his eyelids and says: ‘Who me? As leader? The thought never crossed my mind.’

Sadly for Kemi Badenoch, she can’t just starve Jenrick out. Pretend he doesn’t exist. As Honest Bob is her shadow justice secretary, she was rather obliged to give him a slot on the main stage. This was the moment he had been waiting for. He needed no second invitation. A chance to commune with his people. To look into their souls. To tell them that it wasn’t racist not to want too many black people together in one place.

And his people were ready for him. The hall was roughly two-thirds full, half of them still awake. Which, by the standards of this conference, just about counts as a full house. Maximum engagement. There were people here who were alive after all. Not everyone had come together merely as a communal act of self-annihilation. Honest Bob appeared from behind a screen and the front few rows all stood up to give him an ovation. He raised his arms aloft in triumph. This was going to be his 20 minutes. Let’s get this party started.

Only the party in question wasn’t the Conservative party. It was Reform. Which wasn’t quite the category error it seemed. Because nearly all the delegates in Manchester appeared to also be closet Reform supporters. Some of them had sat through endless dreary Reform-lite speeches and been bored to death. It was all too tepid. An exercise in existential futility. Why bother to be half-arsed about it, when you could have the real thing? And Honest Bob was here to give them permission to be the worst possible versions of themselves.

Honest Bob led them to the promised land. But he did so ever so gently. This wasn’t a Nigel Farage tirade of hate. More an am-dram performance of The Producers.‘’ Light touch, tongue in cheek, authoritarianism with a shiny, happy face. Putting the fun back in fascism again.

Look guys. We’ve been doing this all wrong. We’ve been making all this far right stuff sound too military. A bit 1984. But Honest Bob was here to tell you he could do being unpleasant to foreigners for jokes. Hell, what’s a bit of incitement to burn down migrant hotels between friends. Just the wokerati trying to stop you having a laugh.

Lure them in gradually. Start with a few gags. At least what passes for gags on a conference stage and Honest Bob had given this all a lot of thought. Then this was basically a leadership speech. One that could run in parallel with Kemi’s. He was the leader-elect. He came not to bury Kemi, but to praise her. He just had a funny way of showing his loyalty.

You can see the ambition, the desperation carved into every pore. The man who has never really believed in anything. The remainer Cameroon turned dodgy minister dishing out planning permissions to someone who then donated to the Tories turned, well, rightwing gobshite. Any way the wind blows. All that matters is career advancement. To be someone. Even if it takes his party down a cul-de-sac of irrelevance.

“It’s tough being a Tory,” Honest Bob confided. But don’t worry! That’s why he was no longer a Tory. And no one in the hall need be either. Just a smooth transition to Reform that no one would even notice. Just dare to be you. Give in to your primal desires. Having planted that thought, he went back to some rambling jokes about Liz Truss, Keir Starmer. Not because they were funny but because that’s the template for a leader’s speech. Amazingly, he even got some laughs. The punters wanted him to succeed. Kemi must have been looking on in horror.

There was also a bit of backstory. Poor, deprived Bob. Honest Underdog Bob. The authentic voice of the people. Only he could be trusted to deliver what the masses wanted. The chattering classes were being put on notice. Their day was done. They were wrong on the climate crisis. They were wrong on immigration. They were wrong on everything. The attorney general was basically a traitor. An enabler of terrorism. Channel your inner hate.

Then the coup de théâtre. Honest Bob held up a box and pulled out a judge’s wig. An object of reverence, he said, before explaining his heartfelt contempt for all of them. Just letting criminals off. Dozens of judges with leftwing sympathies. Don’t they know that in the good old days all judges would salivate at the prospect of donning a black cap for a shoplifting offence? Bob wanted those days back. The chance for politicians to appoint their own judges. To reintroduce the death penalty. Especially for foreigners. Coming over here and not taking the trouble to make themselves white.

Enough was enough. Honest Bob was reaching the end of his slot. It was time for the scumbags to die. The people had had enough of being taken for a ride. The collapse of the old order was in sight. And he was banging the nails into the Tory coffin in their own back yard. A new order is coming, he shrieked.

That was the sort of reception Chris Philp could only dream about. He had been been on first up and the only people in the hall were those who had found themselves locked in from the night before. His reputation precedes him. He, too, tried the gags approach and died on his arse. He couldn’t read the audience and ended up being the only person laughing at his own jokes. No one even applauded when he trotted out his own Reform policies.

There again the Philpster can’t even convince himself he’s serious. He’s like a child who is trying a bit too hard. Then it takes a special type of person to enthuse this Dignitas-adjacent crowd. And that person would be Honest Bob. At Tory conference, you’ve either got it or you haven’t.

• A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar

On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back with special guests at another extraordinary year, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally.

Book tickets here.