Nigel Farage could probably believe his luck today – but then, perhaps, neither could Rishi Sunak.
Just as the full-time GB News presenter was addressing the National Conservativism conference in Brussels, local police were sent in to shut it down.
Officers entered the venue to serve a court order demanding that the conference be halted on the grounds that it endangered public safety.
Farage – perhaps sensing the moment – appeared reluctant to leave the stage. Was he trying to hang around so the Brussels police would drag him off as he shouted about ECHR withdrawal? For a moment anything seemed possible.
Eventually Farage left the conference, making way for other speakers including Tory MPs Suella Braverman and Miriam Cates.
I doubt he could believe his luck as he appeared to face down threats to silence him in the capital of the European Union. But then, hundreds of miles away in 10 Downing Street, neither could Sunak.
Today in Parliament was always going to be a difficult day for the Prime Minister, as he pushed through his smoking ban legislation against the will of many right-wing Tory MPs.
There was more than a whiff of legacy planning from Sunak over pursuing a measure which few in the Conservative party had been calling for when he announced it at the party conference last October.
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The vote tonight was always going to be a chance for pretenders to the Tory throne to demonstrate their ‘true blue’ souls to the party’s faithful.
It was no surprise that the likes Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick saying they would be voting against the PM’s plans in the minutes before the vote.
Faced with this, Sunak would have relished the chance to flex his right wing, libertarian instincts to defend the right of his colleagues Braverman and Cates to speak freely at the conference in Brussels.
“Clearly these reports are extremely disturbing. The Prime Minister is a strong supporter and advocate of free speech and believes it is fundamental to any democracy,” Number 10 told political reporters in a teatime Lobby briefing.
“Speaking more broadly to the principle of such events, he is very clear that cancelling events or preventing attendance and no platforming of speakers is damaging to democracy as a result. Free debate and the exchange of views is vital even when we disagree.”
In contrast to the laughing on the Labour front bench about the conference, led by shadow Health secretary Wes Streeting, Sunak was fluttering his Conservative feathers for his MPs and the party’s membership base.
But the fact that it took a row involving Nigel Farage speech to get him out of the cigarette-shaped political hole will not be lost on his team.
It was a reminder to Tory MPs that within Sunak beats the heart of a rightwing Tory. It is just a shame – his critics in his party will be thinking – that they get to see it so rarely.
