Behind the scenes at Conservative conference, a strange set of events left the politics team puzzled

Announcements are never made by two people at once – it’s bad politics, and bad journalism. So what was going on?

As I write, the adoring acolytes of Boris Johnson are clearing the gangways of the ICC in Birmingham, where the Conservatives are holding their annual conference.

Johnson speeches usually create a stir, but this one had the potential to shake the party as well, with 200 usually rowdy souls in the press room falling silent as TVs around the place showed him taking to the stage.

As ever he aimed to provoke, but such is his power among Conservatives these days that the leader’s office had begun to react to the Uxbridge MP’s appearance a full 24 hours before it even happened.

The night before, your humble Independent political team was enjoying a glass of wine in a Birmingham brasserie at the end of a long and winding day, when a perplexing email dropped into our inboxes.

It was an announcement from Theresa May about the party’s post-Brexit immigration plans, but the embargo on it – the time at which journalists are permitted to publish the story – was listed as 10 minutes before the email had even been sent, suggesting things had been done in a confused and rushed way.

Around the same time, the following day’s Daily Mail front page emerged with both Ms May and home secretary Sajid Javid making the immigration policy announcement.

Announcements are never made by two people at once. It’s bad politics. And if they were, a journalist wouldn’t list both names in the first line of the story on page one: it makes for a stodgy opening. So something was going on.

The plot thickened when we realised The Sun had done a story crediting Javid with the policy half an hour before CCHQ had attempted to claim it for the prime minister.

My first enquiries as to what happened were met with irritation from the PM’s spokespeople, which only made me more suspicious.

It was past midnight now and many politicos had convened at the party hosted by Sky, where the drinks flowed freely enough to allow friendly insiders to elucidate on what had gone down.

As it turned out, Javid had planned an interview with The Mail for weeks before his conference speech.

But at a pre-arranged meeting with the prime minister, senior figures from The Sun had made their feelings about being scooped by their rival known to Ms May.

Meanwhile, her advisors were also looking for a way to get their boss into the headlines instead of Boris, who was threatening to steal the show with his appearance the next day.

So her communications head Robbie Gibb re-engineered the immigration announcement at the very last minute, inserting Ms May as the lead alongside Mr Javid on the front of The Daily Mail and then sending out a release that practically airbrushed the home secretary out of the whole thing. The Sun, having made its point, altered its story to give credit to the PM and others later followed suit.

What’s all that got to do with the country, you may ask. Not very much. But it does show how a prime minister who feels the need for good publicity does not mind sticking a finger in the eye of one of her most senior ministers.

And it may yet show how a weakened prime minister could rue the aforementioned eye-sticking when she needs that minister’s support in the not too distant future.

Johnson too is not going anywhere, and I understood his team are gleeful at the way the PM’s horses became so badly spooked over his moment in Birmingham.

The mischief of conference season will quickly be forgotten as Westminster gets back to the work of negotiating Britain’s exit from the EU next week.

Then I suspect Ms May will learn that the solution to her real problem, is more complex than a quick switcheroo on the front page of The Daily Mail.

Yours,

Joe Watts
Political editor