The Conservative Party has gone to Blackpool, and nobody seems to know why.
The Tories don’t normally do a Spring Conference.
They have a ‘Spring Forum’, which is by all accounts a shockingly dull affair, which barely lasts an afternoon, and where only the most Tory of Tories are allowed in.
The media aren’t allowed in. Presumably not enough swan to go around.
But this year, for no adequately explained reason, the Party has taken a leaf out of the Lib Dems’ book and decided they should mark March by decamping en-masse to the seaside jewel in Lancashire’s crown.
And while I’m delighted at any excuse to visit England’s Vegas, the new Tory Spring Conference has had such a chaotic energy it’s hard to work out what they were trying to achieve - let alone whether it’s been a success.
It started with Rishi Sunak maintaining his increasingly hilarious claim to be a tax cutting Chancellor, two weeks before he’s due to raise everyone’s taxes.
Jacob Rees-Mogg indicated he was not a fan of his own Chancellor’s tax hikes, before branding Partygate a “fundamentally trivial” piece of “fluff” - and calling for a public executioner to literally burn EU laws in a public square.
Keeping up? Good, because It’s not even lunchtime.
It was at roughly this point in the day that the visiting press corps was whisked away for a fun afternoon out with party Chairman Oliver Dowden. Again, we don’t know why.
Mr Dowden had just delivered a typically somnambulist speech, with all the grace and charm of a career middle manager.
But less than half an hour later he was behind the controls of one of Blackpool’s shiny new trams, which he was allowed to drive backwards and forwards for a few minutes - speed limited to three miles an hour.
And not satisfied with tempting hungry and baffled reporters with a ‘Dowden drives Tories off the rails’ headline - they decided to offer us two.
Because from there we went to the Pleasure Beach - or, as Dowden had earlier mis-named it “the Pleasure Garden” - which had been opened up specially, a day before the start of the season, so the Conservative Party chairman could have a go on a rollercoaster.
The ride - Icon - is the UK’s first and only double launch rollercoaster, which reaches speeds of up to 52 miles per hour, has two inversions and an 88 foot top hat.
Mr Dowden looked nervous before climbing aboard, but he seemed to enjoy it.
But crucially, at NO POINT in the afternoon was there a discussion of levelling up, public transport or the struggles of the entertainment and service industries in a post-Covid world.
Meanwhile, spare a thought for poor old Sajid Javid, whose speech was scheduled for exactly the same time as Dowden was taking every journalist in Blackpool out for a jolly to an empty theme park.
Not only that, but the live stream from the hall where Mr Javid was delivering his speech failed.
So the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care delivered a keynote speech exclusively to the couple of hundred people physically present in the room.
In the hours since this took place, the Saj speech has already grown into a tantalising legend. Rumours are flying around the conference bar that he did a William Hague impression, declared Boris Johnson a war hero and exited the stage by doing the worm.
Only two of those things are true, but you’ll never know which one isn’t because nobody saw the speech.
In decades to come, people will speak of the great lost Javid speech of 2022 in the same hushed tones as the Stone Roses at Spike Island. If you can remember Sajid Javid’s speech, were you really there?
Last up today was Michael Gove, who opened his speech by having a pop at his old pal turned arch nemesis David Cameron - asking the crowd: “Whatever happened to him?”
Minutes later it emerged that what happened to him is that he is as we speak driving a huge lorry of food and supplies to Poland and I can’t believe I’m actually typing this.
And while all this was happening, Grant Shapps was accidentally typing a very strongly worded letter to a man who used to run P&O - but no longer runs P&O.
Which is like the ministerial equivalent of complaining your duck down pillows have been delivered late to the wrong John Lewis on Twitter.
Even tomorrow’s agenda has become something of a movable feast, and at the time of writing the paper programme, website and Twitter accounts are giving different times and line-ups for Saturday’s big hitter speeches.
Originally - again, nobody knows why - Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was supposed to be closing the show. After Boris Johnson, her boss, the Prime Minister.
Even the conference’s slogan - “GETTING ON WITH THE JOB” - is crushingly free of exciting forward momentum.
The backdrop may as well say “STILL PLODDING ALONG”.
Currently the most plausible reason we can think of for the Conservative Party upping sticks and coming to Blackpool today is genuinely that Oliver Dowden wanted the afternoon off to drive a tram and have a go on a rollercoaster.
And if that’s true, fair play to the man.
