Our correspondent sees Dr. David Starkey on sparkling form at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester

Think of the great comedy double acts and who comes to mind? Laurel and Hardy? Morecambe and Wise? Reeves and Mortimer? The Chuckle Brothers (OK, not them).

Give over. Make way. Step aside. The Marks and Starks show, which has been touring England for what seems to be longer than the Rolling Stones, hit Manchester yesterday and the crowd went wild - or what passes for wild at the Tory Conference.

The format is well established. Veteran straight man - there’s a joke in there if you look hard enough - Mark Littlewood, the guiding light of PopCon, asks a question of Conservative public intellectual Dr David Starkey. Or to be precise, he attempts to ask a question, gets a few words out, Dr David guesses the topic, and starts answering it with a degree of detail and with a wealth of examples that most people save for their PhD theses. But with jokes, for Starkey has a mischievous sense of humour.

Like Starmer, father was a toolmaker, he announced (theatrical pause) but a better one. Aristotle was a superior thinker to Plato (Swift concurs), because he knew that government was like a restaurant meal - to be judged by the diners, not the chefs. The Anglican Church offered an English version of Shinto. The COVID expert group SAGE was used as an example of the danger of government by experts - ‘look at the fuckup they made’. Universities were the monasteries of the present day - ‘full of idle people, perverting the minds of - and often the bodies - of the young’. Like their predecessors they should be dissolved (or at least defunded). And so on.

Swift noted that the jokes are not a diversion from the serious stuff, they are intrinsic to it. Dr Starkey can get angry, but he knows that a mixture of animus and wit is a the best weapon to lay your opponents in the dust.

What Mark Littlewood correctly described as the Starkey Thesis may be familiar to Swift’s readers by now. In very abbreviated form, it is that the nation took a dreadful turn under Tony Blair (constitutional vandal), and needs to be restored to its pre-1997 structure. Parliamentary sovereignty is key, because Parliament contains or represents us all. The Supreme Court is an abomination and government by lawyers - the Imperial Judiciary - is folly. Quangos damage ministerial accountability and run things to suit themselves. The worst bad legislation must go - Human Rights Act, Equality Act, Climate Change Act, all repealed. The tired phrase, ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ was just wrong, It’s the constitution that needed to be mended first, and all things would follow. This work needs to be prepared for now, and executed rapidly. Phew.

This was a performance that cannot be captured in a mere blog. Swift urges those who were not there to watch it on PopCon’s YouTube channel to appreciate the full fireworks show of Starkey’s repertoire. He has an answer to everything. What, asked one audience member, should be done with those Blairite talking-shops, the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, as abolition was not politically practical? Simples. Starkey proposed full devolution of fiscal powers, and an end to financial grants from England under the Barnett Formula. In a year or so devolution would be dead, and the constitional unity of Britain restored.

Starkey said he was ready to work with anyone - Conservatives, Reform, even Labour (!) to achieve national redemption. He sees no present heir to another famous double act - Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph - but spoke approvingly of both Nigel Farage and what he naughtily called Ozempic Man (Robert Jenrick). Badenoch was mentioned a few times but notably did not receive the Starkey blessing.

Nowadays (thanks to Blair, of course) the Lord Chancellor does not need to be a lawyer and does not preside in the House of Lords. So Swift has a modest proposal. When the next right-of-centre government gets in, give Starkey an Earldom (a life peerage would be an insult to a constitutional historian of his repute) and make him Lord Chancellor. It’s time the Lords got more interesting, and Starkey is just the man.