QUENTIN LETTS: Kemi's a mother on a mission. Tangle with her at your peril!
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That was quite an equaliser. Cobalt-clad Kemi Badenoch, speaking for an hour and six minutes, smouldered and growled and finally erupted into a peroration about how her policies offered 'something for everyone'. The contrast with Andy Burnham's Liverpool speech was total.
Mr Burnham embodied shuffling, shoulder-shrugging nonchalance. Mrs Badenoch? A mother in the grip of intent. Tangle with her at your peril.
Last week's whimpering was matched by driven indignation and something more modern, less drippy.
How she spangled. The Symphony Hall's lights bounced off her lipstick and her U-shaped parade of white teeth. She is starting to go grey at the top of her hairline but the energy was as neat as Nasa rocket fuel. From my perch in one of the balconies she looked tiny, agleam with intent, and yet so smoky in the vocals.
As she stepped on stage she was hit by the first of numerous ovations. Those watching on television may have wondered why the delivery was not faster. The reason: the Tory faithful were clapping too much.
The morning's preamble had included not only God Save The King from a tattooed diva in a velvet dress but also a speech of stolid, bracing right-wingery from shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy. He delivered it with the bluff intent of a Trollopian innkeeper advising a dissolute guest there would be no question of starting a tab.
Home affairs spokesman Chris Philp was a more blurty proposition, trousers flapping, Adam's apple plunging up and down. He always speaks as if in the throes of heinous indigestion.
'From my perch in one of the balconies she looked tiny, agleam with intent, and yet so smoky in the vocals'
The day's first standing ovation went not to a human but to Zuzu, the two-year-old black labrador of party chairman Kevin Hollinrake. She was brought on stage as a dig at that idiotic Labour minister last week who said taking your black lab to a country pub was racist. Mr Hollinrake started drinking a pint of beer on stage at 10.15am. 'Living the dream,' he said, contemplating his mutt and his ale. Zuzu, being a gundog, was unfazed by the noise of cheers and laughter.
There was also a dreadful few minutes when the shadow cabinet took their seats. Gameshow cheesy.
Mrs Badenoch's own entry was accompanied by some techno-tweaked Elgar. Her first words: 'There is a fight coming in British politics.' It was a word she returned to several times. 'Fight'. Not that you'd want to step into a kick-boxing ring with this one. Not without gumshield and waiting ambulance.
A passage in the middle of the speech was as strong as anything I have seen on a conference stage. It came when she defended her mixed-race children from accusations that they were not English. Here was a female caracal defending her kittens. More than that, it was looking ahead, in hope to the future. After her raw defiance she leavened it with lightness, saying 'I don't know if you noticed, but I am black.'
Millions of non-Tory voters may have felt a tingle and a prickling of goose pimples at this.
Some politicians hit one note and stick to it. Mrs Badenoch can do various tricks. She can talk about tradition in one breath and in the next use the expression 'bad-ass teachers', and it doesn't jar. This speech had a few moments of almost Judi Dench softness, not least when she was talking about murder victims and their parents. One such, the father of Grace O'Malley-Kumar, a young woman murdered in Nottingham, was sitting in the stalls.
There was the usual knockabout, although the attacks on Nigel Farage and Reform's top brass went further than expected, possibly further than was wise. Nor is it yet possible to swallow Tory bragging about building 50,000 prison places. The lack of jail cells is a blot on the Conservative record.
But a leader's speech is an alchemist's mixture of policy, posturing, rhetoric and most of all character. And there is surely little question about the nature of this diminutive forcefield of a woman.
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