After hitting rock bottom, robotic Liz Truss is Movin’ On Up

The Prime Minister’s opening band was in danger of upstaging her. Truss’s warm-up act – her trusty lieutenant Nadhim Zahawi – triggered gales of guffaws by recounting his “summer job as chancellor of the exchequer”. Eventually, Liz herself pranced out to Movin’ On Up by M People - which one assumes was a tribute to mortgage rates, or possibly the Labour Party.

It was hardly a Churchillian opener. She spoke of two-for-one meal deals and “cranes building buildings”, but the Tory faithful bust a gut trying to clap in the right places.

These conference speeches are inherently excruciating - lurching awkwardly from one clap line to another, complete with agonising pauses for applause. Sometimes, it took the crowd a few seconds to catch up. As the claps trickled in, Liz would grin expectantly at the audience like a dog who’d just learnt a new trick.

Truss shared New Labour’s penchant for three-word repetition. She believed in “growth, growth and growth!” Taxes, regulation and government meddling were “wrong, wrong and wrong”. At times, it sounded a bit like Tony Blair had been put through a malfunctioning AI.

Her sci-fi baddie outfit merely enhanced the whole robot vibe – a fitted metallic red dress with futuristic shoulder pads that looked like LK Bennett’s take on Ming the Merciless. The jerky hand-gestures were back too. Imagine a puppet having a stroke.

If you’re here for soaring oratory, Liz Truss probably ain’t your gal. But her message was clear - sound money, unashamedly growing that perennial pie and patching things up with the Bank of England.

She’d even constructed a composite pantomime baddie - a dastardly “anti-growth coalition” encompassing Labour, the Lib Dems, Nicola Sturgeon, militant unions, Extinction Rebellion and TV talking heads. Not mentioned were the anti-building, anti-fracking coalition within her own party.

Mid-way through her speech, a pair of Anna Soubry impersonators in the audience did Liz a favour by unveiling an anti-fracking flag. One had even worn a blue suit for maximum stealth.

But the protesters – Greenpeace, as it turned out – seemed to give Truss a bit more lead in her pencil. She gleefully added them to her list of “anti-growth” enemies, as the crowd whooped and cheered.

By the end, the anti-growth coalition had expanded to include not just the protesters but the lead singer of M People, who put out a statement saying how much he hated the Tories. The trouble with this is that since all musicians apart from Brian Ferry are Left-wing, your options as a Tory PM are necessarily limited. In fact, they’ll only really be safe when Jim Davidson releases a single.

In his speech on Tuesday, James Cleverly had described the Conservative Party as a “family”. Which one, the Sopranos? Or the Borgias?

But after days of in-fighting, torrid briefing and ministers veering delightedly off-piste in interviews, goodwill abounded in the conference hall at least.

Robotics aside, Truss’s speech was clear and mercifully short - about half an hour with two standing ovations, although it ended abruptly. It was only when I spotted the little side-mic being lowered into the ground that I realised it was over. The PM kept rigidly still as if auditioning for Coppelia and grinned at the audience as they shuffled to their feet.

After five days of unadulterated blue-on-blue bloodletting, this was a safe, middle of the road speech which will change very little. If there’s one thing Tories excel at, it’s clapping politely while preparing to wield the knife.

But to paraphrase M People, when you’ve hit rock bottom the only way is up.