Tory Party Conference 2019: You absolutely definitely couldn’t make it up, so don’t even bother trying

Unfortunately for Dominic Cummings, groping is the story that just will not go away. They’ve thrown everything at it but it’s just not working

The main reason the genius Dominic Cummings is universally acknowledged to be a genius is his thrilling innovation, dreamt up with the help of a large red bus with a lie down the side, that in modern politics, you’re far better off winding up your opponent with calculated fibs than you are telling the truth.

In 2016, Remainers spent so long angrily disputing the “£350m a week” figure down the side of the Vote Leave bus that it hammered it into the public conscience at the expense of everything else.

It is precisely the same strategy that is being tried by rebranding the Benn Act, the “Surrender Act”, and watching the knee jerk anger feed the beast he created.

And so, here we are on day two of the Tory Party conference, the one designed to hammer home the message that only the Conservative Party can “Get Brexit Done”, a soundbite very much from the £350m lie school. And we find ourselves wondering what thoughts are whirring inside the head of the Brexit Brain Egg himself, as he skulks his grey tracksuited way around the conference bars and hotels and fringe events, the anti-establishment man that accidentally found himself running the establishment.

As he knows, when you’re explaining, you’re losing, and what his government is finding itself having to explain, rightly or wrongly, is that his own wife has never been groped by the prime minister.

Just pause for a minute. Drink that in. That’s really happened. An official statement, released by Dominic Cummings’s wife, Mary Wakefield, who is commissioning editor of The Spectator magazine, to put on record that Boris Johnson definitely did not once grope her.

Unfortunately for Dominic Cummings, groping is the story that just will not go away. They’ve thrown everything at it but it’s just not working.

The housing minister, Esther McVey, has announced bold new plans about building “3D houses” on “3D computers” but even that isn’t moving attention elsewhere.

They’ve told some of the worst jokes that have ever been told. An MP called Jake Berry has genuinely said these words, in public, on film: “The only homes we are not going to build in the north of England is Sherlock Holmes.”

That really has happened.

But it’s still not done the job.

And here’s the bit that really doesn’t make sense. Boris Johnson has officially denied the allegations, made in The Sunday Times by the journalist Charlotte Edwardes, that around 20 years ago, he grabbed her inner thigh under the table in The Spectator’s office.

He has made it a case of her word against his. She, a journalist of impeccable reputation. He a proven liar, sacked twice for lying, and who, well, if he told you it was Wednesday, you’d check.

Who you choose to believe is, of course, up to you. But here are just a few of the friendly thoughts, sent to Edwardes on Twitter, in the hours after the prime minister decided to let the public decide who was a liar, he or her:

“Boris is way out of your league!”

“Who would want to put their hand up your thigh? Nobody’s that desperate.”

“History is littered with dregs trying to score for money and fame by kiss ’n’ telling and soon they’ll be forgotten.”

What people. What times.

Out on the distant fringes of Tory conference, life is carrying on as what counts as normal in this through-the-looking-glass world.

Naturally, the cap is duly doffed to whoever’s idea it was to hold the panel featuring John Redwood, Arlene Foster and Mark Francois on stage at the Comedy Store. Our headliners did not disappoint.

John Redwood is furious that Brexit hasn’t been got on with. “Come the election, I wouldn’t want to be an MP who had broken his promise to help us leave the European Union,” he said. John Redwood, you won’t need reminding, has voted to keep Britain in the European Union three times, by voting against Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement.

There is a hell of a lot of this stuff doing the rounds. You cannot move in Manchester without encountering the words, “Get Brexit Done.” The whole occasion is fuelled by the ever growing fury of Brexit paralysis, and no one is more powered up by it than the paralysers themselves.

You couldn’t make it up. You really couldn’t. You also couldn’t make up that Mark Francois is writing a book called You Couldn’t Make It Up. Out next summer.

He also revealed that he hasn’t bought David Cameron’s book because he went to the index, looked under F, and “my name wasn’t there, so David can keep his 25 quid”.

Someone really should break it to Mr Francois that this is not how the publishing market works. You do not receive the cover price from everybody who chooses not to buy it. It certainly cannot be ruled out that Mr Francois thinks he’s on to a canny ruse. When the entire population of the world without exception, fails to purchase You Couldn’t Make It Up by Mark Francois (retail price, £1), he may genuinely be expecting to receive a £7bn royalty cheque.

You Couldn’t Make It Up. Really, you couldn’t. So don’t even bother trying.