The Conservative Party was an hour away from Tasering one of its own MPs

If the home secretary’s announcement to grant police the freedom to Taser whoever they liked had come slightly earlier, an MP called Geoffrey Clifton-Brown could have been in serious trouble

The lights drop, the pre-roll music plays, the home secretary strides on to the conference stage to the sound of thrilled applause.

Lights up again. She clears her throat and these are Priti Patel’s opening words:

“Today, here in Manchester, the Conservative Party takes its rightful place as the party of law and order in Britain once again.”

Twenty minutes previously, the party of law and order in Britain had had to send home one of its MPs, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown. They actually expelled him from the party conference, after police had to be called to a function room to step into a row he was having with security personnel.

Paramedics were called. Around a third of the entire conference area was placed on lockdown.

It would eventually become known that Mr Clifton-Brown, MP for the Cotswolds, had been trying to blag his wife into the International Lounge without accreditation. And when his plan failed, became very agitated.

What Mr Clifton-Brown did next remains shrouded in a certain amount of secrecy.

It has been speculated that Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown shouted, “Do you know who I am?”

That may or may not be true, but what certainly is true is that, as Geoffrey Clifton-Brown made his premature way to Manchester Piccadilly station, quite a lot of people can now say they know who Geoffrey Clifton-Brown is than would have been the case 24 hours before.

“We stand with the brave men and women of our police and security services,” Ms Patel continued. The brave men and women, who go rushing into the face of danger, putting themselves in the harm’s way, right here, in the middle of the Conservative Party conference.

We stand with the thin blue line of heroes that stand, quite literally, between the party of law and order and a security worker with whom the party of law and order has lost its temper, because the party of law and order’s wife doesn’t have the required accreditation to get into a very poorly appointed indoor marquee space with free filter coffee and not much else.

If anything, Mr Clifton-Brown, aka The Cotswolds One, was lucky. What happened next could have floored him, quite literally.

“I have created a new fund to give police chiefs the ability to train and equip police officers with Tasers,” said the home secretary. It was an actual policy announcement.

“It is the job of chief constables to make that operational decision. It is the job of the home secretary to empower them to do so. I am giving them that power.”

A lucky escape then. If she’d given them that power about an hour earlier, the MP for the Cotswolds might well have discovered that merely being an elected representative of the party of law and order, doesn’t mean the party of law and order will think twice before leaving you writhing about on the floor of its International Lounge like a goldfish out of its bowl.

Still, not everyone might find themselves so fortunate. As the home secretary, stood there, taking her party’s rightful place as the party of law and order, it was tricky not to recall that, just last week, the party of law and order was found, in the Supreme Court, to have acted unlawfully when it shut down parliament.

It’s also tricky not to consider that the prime minister still won’t give an honest answer about what he intends to do, on 19 October, when he is highly likely to be legally compelled to ask the EU for an Article 50 extension, which he has said he will refuse to do.

Until this afternoon, it had been widely suggested that that course of action will land him back in the Supreme Court before the end of the month.

There’s a lot of hassle involved in that, not to mention significant public expense. Why bother, now that the party of law and order has come up with a far better solution.

Three torturous years later and all political attempts to break the Brexit deadlock have failed. Who knows what 10,000 volts might achieve?