Boris Johnson takes centre stage—from the sidelines
By BAGEHOT
TODAY’S Conservative Party conference is all about one person: Boris Johnson. Mr Johnson booked the largest room in the conference centre, with enough space for 700, but people nevertheless started queuing three hours early. He came flanked by a bigger entourage of security guards and minders than he ever commanded as foreign secretary.
The journalists were as fevered as many of the delegates and began queuing just as early. The tabloids rejoiced in the fact that Mr Johnson had trolled the prime minister by jogging through a field of wheat near his Oxfordshire home (Ms May once remarked that the naughtiest thing she had done as a child was to run through a wheat field). The Sun revealed that Mr Johnson had talked to “senior Tories” about making a leadership bid and said that, if he were to do so, he’d delay Brexit for at least six months in order to restart negotiations. Mr Johnson laid out nothing less than an alternative manifesto for the future of the Conservative Party.
