Labour's conference steams onwards into the gathering storm, high on self-admiration, deaf to dangers.
asserted
conference → steam → dangers
Day two, no one mentioned the price of diesel.
asserted
one → mention → diesel
Delegates did not speak of borrowing rates, hurtling skywards with inflation.
asserted
Delegates → speak → inflation
An unpromising slot mid-morning was all he needed to assert his superiority over Cabinet colleagues.
asserted
he → need → colleagues
Red Ed deployed all the oratorical tricks: squashed facial gestures to convey incredulity; scampering crescendos; bold pauses; and two enormous forefingers brandished like hotdog sausages, long and pink and bendy.
asserted
Ed → deploy → sausages
He threw back his oblong head with its cantilevered fangs.
asserted
He → throw → fangs
The lips waggled like seaweed on a rock at high tide.
asserted
lips → waggle → tide
Next he was furrowing his brow and pushing his eyebrows into a V. He reprised, once again, the story of how his refugee parents came to this country and made him a man of such virtue.
Towards the end of a speech in which he claimed he would ‘mobilise the world’ against poor countries’ debt – he intended to persuade the World Bank to write off these vast sums – he was chuckling at his own brilliance.
asserted
he → furrow → brilliance
He hailed the ‘resilient idealism’ of his late mother and ascribed the same quality to himself.
asserted
He → hail → himself
‘Resilient idealism,’ he repeated, washing the expression round his mouth, tasting it.
asserted
he → repeat → it
‘I love that phrase.’
asserted
I → love → phrase
While other mortals became more cynical with the years (or in your sketch-writer’s case simply more knackered and fatalistic and eager to escape the company of these deceitful maniacs), Ed found that he himself merely became more pure and idealistic.
Eleven years ago he led Labour to unexpected defeat.
asserted
he → become → defeat
A major factor in that election was Ed’s prattishness, writes Quentin Letts
He seemed to think it a good thing.
asserted
it → write → election
A Foreign Secretary must eyeball the world’s tyrants and megalomaniacs.
asserted
Secretary → eyeball → tyrants
He performed with such hammy bombast that the audience leapt to its feet.
asserted
audience → perform → feet
It’s reality they can’t abide, a reality in which their first two years back in government have made the economy worse.
asserted
economy → ’ → government
He basted himself in the delicious hot grease of the crowd’s applause.
asserted
He → baste → applause
Eleven years ago he led Labour to unexpected defeat.
asserted
he → lead → defeat
But now he thinks he is running the show.
asserted
he → think → show
He said ‘how proud’ he was of Andy Burnham.
asserted
he → say → Burnham
This was said in a patronising manner, like Spike the bulldog in Tom and Jerry saying ‘that’s mah boy’.
asserted
that → say → Tom
Wes Streeting, Defence Secretary, had spoken earlier.
asserted
Streeting → speak → ?
Mr Streeting was the Centrist option the party declined.
asserted
party → decline → ?
A delegate made a little joke about Wes’s ambition.
asserted
delegate → make → ambition
Mr Streeting ruefully remarked that, like the Navy’s newest sub, Agamemnon, ‘that ship has sailed’.
asserted
ship → remark → sub
He noted that whereas some people used to say he looked like Prince William, now he looked more like George V. Both Reynolds and Streeting radiated an adult practicality that was lacking in Ed Miliband.
asserted
that → note → Miliband
Yet it is Miliband that the activists prefer in a vortex of puerile delusion that sucks us ever deeper into trouble.
asserted
that → prefer → trouble
He found a judicious pace and there was none of the mad honking we used to hear from Rachel Reeves.
asserted
we → find → Reeves
Jeepers, what damage she did.
asserted
she → do → damage
Mr Healey wore the same red tie he had lent to Gordon Brown to deliver his conference speech in Bournemouth in 1999 (Gordon, just off a transatlantic flight, had no other red tie to hand).
asserted
Gordon → wear → hand
The day’s other much-anticipated speech, from Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood on the subject of illegal immigration, went phutt.
asserted
speech → anticipate → immigration
Rather than confront the activists she announced various new schemes for letting migrants into the country.
asserted
she → confront → country
As I left at the end of the day I swear I heard a ghostly orchestra strike up Archibald Joyce’s Songe d’Automne.
asserted
orchestra → leave → d’Automne
Night was closing in and we were churning towards oblivion.
asserted
we → close → oblivion
The Aporia
