All hail the Kult of Kemi – captain, coach and owner of the Conservatives | John Crace

The Tory leader is now too big for the party to allow her to fail, so everything she does is acclaimed a work of genius

Where’s AI slop when you need it? It could all have been so much simpler. Just ask ChatGPT to write me a leader’s speech in the style of Kemi Badenoch. Make it an hour and 10 minutes long, so plenty of room for padding. Go heavy on the slogans, cliches and the obligatory crap politician jokes. Ones we’ve all heard many times before. Not least at this conference.

Make the usual digs at Labour and put the boot in to Reform. The main aim of the speech is to try to reposition a party that is tanking in third place on 20% in the polls as the main opposition to the government. And just to give everyone a reason to go home with a feeling of mild optimism, chuck in a retail offer at the end. An uncosted tax cut for people who are rich but don’t feel quite rich enough. The new multimillionaire common-or-garden lower middle classes.

Unfortunately, Kemi made the schoolgirl error of trying to write the speech for herself. And it was much the worse for it. What’s the point of having AI if you don’t use it? It was too long, too flabby. No real argument, just a collection of random thoughts. Andy Burnham in Liverpool it wasn’t. Parts of it even seemed to bore Kemi herself. As if she was going through the motions. Lazy, even. That it was still by far and away the best speech of the entire conference is not really the point. More of a reflection of how dire the others have been. Four days of the Tories in Birmingham is a trial for anyone remotely sentient.

On the surface, the Tories have seemed a happy tribe this week. There has been a soporific tranquillity to the proceedings. Few members attending, non-existent queues and above all no Robert Jenrick. Or even Liz Truss. How we miss her. But the unity feels very fragile. The Tories are now Kemi and Kemi is the Tories. The party has bet the bank on her. Kemi even now calls herself the captain, coach and owner of the Tories. Everyone else is an also-ran.

This comes at a huge risk. Because Kemi has become almost too big for the Tories to allow her to fail. So they daren’t question her. Anything she does has to be acclaimed as a work of genius. Just walking on stage is enough to secure her a standing ovation. No one has ever quite walked like that before.

The party has been captured by the Kult of Kemi. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy that could lead them to oblivion. They have no idea if Kemi is messiah or lemming, but they are happy to go over the cliff regardless. They are out of other options. Just don’t stop to ask why nothing the Tories seem to do is cutting through. Why the polls are stubbornly flatlining. Why it’s odds-on that beyond the few hundred people in the hall, no one will pay a blind bit of attention to her speech. It will be forgotten by tomorrow.

The morning’s proceedings began with the Tory chair, Kevin Hollinrake. Kev’s dog got a bigger cheer than Kev. Next up was the shadow justice secretary, Nick Timothy, a one-man cluster of anti-matter. No man can suck the energy out of the room like Nick. The only thing that would cheer him up is a public execution. Then the Philpster. The UK’s self-proclaimed superhero. The vigilante who took on the French. Endearingly, he still thinks the French navy knows who he is. Chris, most of the UK don’t know who you are. Nor do they care.

After this, things began to get surreal as each member of the shadow cabinet was announced and applauded as they took their seats. A bit like a third-rate talent show. The presenter still didn’t know who Nick Timothy was, despite having introduced him moments earlier. She also got Helen Whately’s name wrong. And there was one empty chair. Tom Tugendhat had invented an unmissable trip to India to get out of the embarrassment. Wise choice.

A spot of Elgar and then it was Kemi. There was a fight for the soul of the country. There’s always a fight for the soul of the country as far as the Tories are concerned. They don’t seem to realise that it was them that ripped the soul out of it. “What a great conference we’ve had,” she said. It was hard to know if she was being ironic. Other than the fact that everyone has been wandering round in brain-dead surprise that the Tories still exist, it’s been a disaster.

After that things went weird. As if we were entering a weird dystopia. Being asked to believe the unbelievable. Like when she said that her shadow cabinet was a united team that listened to one another. This after Kemi had literally said that she was the party and that anyone who disagreed with her could go fuck themselves. The whole point of Kemi is that she listens to no one. She also had a pop at Labour for putting all their faith in one man. Pots, kettles. As for Reform, she had nothing but contempt. You’d like to think that would rule out a possible coalition.

The one moment when Kemi became truly passionate – believable even – was when she talked about race. This was Kemi at her best, talking about something she really cared about. Even if she did imagine there was no racism in football in the 70s and 80s. But this was all too short and the speech began to feel like it was dragging into eternity. We’d still be trying to stay awake well into the afternoon.

Finally the reveal. The inheritance tax cut that would be funded by as yet unspecified welfare cuts. There would be no inheritance tax on anyone leaving their home to their children. With an extra million-quid freebie thrown in, in case you needed to do it up after your parents had let it get tatty. You could hear the cheers from the country’s stately homes echo around the hall.

Here was a party that really got it. Which was prepared to do something about the cost of living for the mega rich. Even as Kemi was speaking, millions of ordinary citizens were phoning their brokers to liquidate their stock market assets so that they could upgrade their £1m homes to something far more palatial. The property market in mega-homes had just gone mental. The people’s earl, Charles Spencer, could breathe easy. Althorp was safe. Let them drink champagne.

There was just time for Kemi to pay tribute to Jeffrey Archer – the Tories have a soft spot for a convicted conman who ruined several lives – and then came the extended standing ovations. An echo chamber is going to echo.