Political column - October 5

And it was Boris Johnson's fault!

Who could have imagined that Theresa May's keynote speech to the Conservative party conference would turn out to be one of the most memorable ever?

Here are some extracts: "We have created record numbers of jobs, cough, cough (drink)... lower taxes, cough, squeak (drink)... spreading prosperity to all corners of the United Kingdom, cough, cough, squeak (drink)."

After earlier saying that the Tories' general election campaign had been "too scripted," two unscripted elements made her speech remarkable.

The first came when a nerdy-looking character who had been skulking among the photographers in the front row - he turned out later to be a serial prankster - emerged to hand her a P45, telling her: "Boris asked me to give you this."

She accepted her P45, but had a good ad-lib: "I was about to talk about somebody I would like to give a P45 - that's Jeremy Corbyn."

Coincidentally or not, she thereafter contracted a frog in her throat so severe that an issue which has hung over the conference - can she go on? - arose in a whole new and unexpected context.

At one point Chancellor Philip Hammond reached over to give her a throat lozenge.

"I hoped you noticed that, ladies and gentlemen - the Chancellor giving something away for free."

She struggled on. There could be no cutting away for ad breaks, so the delegates did the next best thing, with spontaneous standing ovations as she cracked up, giving time for running repairs, which chiefly comprised taking drinks of water.

It was all very unfortunate, but did chime with one of the themes of her speech, which was to allow people to see more of her human side.

She said sorry for the general election result, and took personal blame.

People thought she was not very emotional, she said, and she was not the kind of person who wore her heart on her sleeve.

She lifted the veil and spoke about herself. She was the granddaughter of a ladies' maid. She and her husband were sad never to have been blessed with children.

The political theme can be summed up in the phrase, repeated several times, of "renewing the British dream for a new generation." She spoke of compassion and justice for ordinary people.

In the circumstances, one of her wrap-up lines was apt: "The test of a leader is how you respond when tough times come upon you."

It got a little cheer and sympathetic applause.

Away from Mrs May losing her voice, this is a party conference which was held in the shadow of dinosaurs.

Once thought extinct they have, like a political version of Jurassic Park, broken free of their glass cases to wreak havoc. Or so Philip Hammond told the nervous delegates.

The Great Bearded Dinosaur was once regarded by the Tories as a laughable myth. At the last general election, Mrs May did not take the threat of the GBD seriously and thought voters would laugh it off as well.

The Tories have realised that that was a mistake and are now wide-eyed and anxious and want to warn everybody of the threat.

"We owe it to the next generation to show how Corbyn's Marxist policies will lead us back to where Britain was in the late 1970s," duly warned Mr Hammond.

Jeremy Corbyn was a "clear and present danger" to the nation's prosperity. And he and his band are outlaws too.

"We will not resort to the politics of the mob, to the threats, the intimidation, and the undertones of lawlessness that were so menacingly present last week."

He meant at Labour's conference at Brighton.

If you want to fight back against the dinosaurs, you need somebody rampaging around with a big dinosaur net.

This is where Boris Johnson comes in. Boris is, by definition, political news.

Here is what I mean, adopting the current style of what passes for the ITN "News".

Tom Bradby: "As if you thought things could not get any worse in the Conservative Party, Boris Johnson issued an astonishing challenge to party leader Theresa May as he arrived at the conference today.

"The Foreign Secretary said 'Good Morning' to waiting reporters, throwing down the gauntlet to Mrs May with a vision of meteorological prospects which was not authorised by Downing Street in advance. Asked about his remarks, Mrs May declined to deny that she would cut off his legs and boil him in oil. Let's go to our political correspondent in Manchester for five minutes of in-depth analysis as, once again, Boris Johnson seeks to steal the limelight."

Boris bounced in to the conference like Tigger, with some good jokes, and a promise to blast the GBD into space.

He went down well, only to undo it later with a tasteless comment about bodies in Libya.

In one of those strange aspects of modern politics, there have been calls for him to be sacked for what he said, but no calls for sackings of those whose policies turned Libya into a failed state with tens of thousands dead, injured, or ethnically cleansed, vast swathes in the grip of Islamic State, and busy exporting migrants into the hazardous Mediterranean, thousands of whom have drowned.