A Pessimist's Guide to Boris Johnson's Conference Speech

With pictures of an empty conference hall going viral, the Conservatives can always rely on the draw of Boris Johnson. Party members will show up for the Foreign Secretary in numbers, which is exactly what they did this afternoon for a foreign policy speech – although everyone was probably more interested to see if he would try to get himself sacked again, or hold a pity party about the difficulties of living off a mere £141,405 a year.

He disappointed on those counts, and while there were a few laughs, it wasn't exactly a classic. So let's look at what he said about Britain in the big bad world. In an address entitled "Winning the future" he mapped out his vision for a "Global Britain", which is something Conservatives have to keep repeating since we're withdrawing from the EU. Fresh from reciting a colonialist Rudyard Kipling poem in Burma's most sacred temple, it was essentially a slightly more detailed version of what everyone here is doing, which is fantasising about Britain as the thrusting trading nation they have seen in Hornblower re-runs.

To give you an idea of the tone, we can skip to the end, where he concluded: "We have been privileged collectively to be placed in charge of this amazing country at a critical moment in our history. We are not the lion. We do not claim to be the lion. That role is played by the people of this country. But it is up to us now – in the traditional, non-threatening, genial and self-deprecating way of the British – to let that lion roar."

Ah yes, Britain, a country that never threatened anyone.

Not in our genial past and not today apparently. "The phrase Global Britain makes sense because if you said 'Global China' or 'Global Russia' or even, alas, Global America, it would not quite have the same flavour." Well sure, but maybe that's because nobody takes it quite as seriously.

"We contribute 25 percent of European aid spending and yet no one seriously complains that we have a sinister national agenda," he said. Well, nobody except the IFS, who say that the impact of aid is being diluted by pursuing "the national interest". Tellingly, he moved immediately from talking about aid to post-Brexit free trade, and with the two being conflated so easily we can be on the lookout for UK Aid money being used in the service of the neediest of all: British capitalists. And what could be sinister about them?

Cast against this picture of Britain as a benevolent player was a dystopian vision of Britain under Jeremy Corbyn, who he called "Caracas" for his support of Venezuela (as in crackers, geddit?). He joked about how Cambodian tyrant Pol Pot was "some Asiatic John McDonnell". Personally, I found this joke about a murderous dictator very funny. Also hilarious: Boris's continued promotion of the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, even as it slaughters Yemenis in a murderous war. Oh Boris! Whatever next?

But let's not be so negative. He talked of the good Britain is doing in the world right now – for instance in Nigeria, where British troops are training Nigerian forces to defeat "the numbskulls" of the Boko Haram. "But you can't just tackle the problem in Nigeria," he said. "Those terrorists' AK-47s are being smuggled down through he desert from the chaos of Libya, and in Tripoli I have seen the charred ruins of our embassy – the smashed snooker table and the room where Tony Blair once held a banquet. But I was proud to run that Union Jack up the flagpole and that embassy is being rebuilt."

What happened in between Blair and now to destroy the embassy? Boris didn't say. I guess a knowing gag about David Cameron's ill conceived military adventure that turned Libya into a hot bed of extremism isn't the sort of self-deprecation Boris was thinking about.

@SimonChilds13