Boris Johnson ditches the auto-cue for his keynote speech after Tory conference is hit by days of technical glitches and Rishi Sunak was accused of being 'awkward'
Having been bogged by a series of technical glitches of late, Boris Johnson today ditched his auto-cue as he set out his vision for post-coronavirus Britain.
The PM eschewed technology in favour of traditional pen and paper as he delivered his address to the 'virtual' Tory conference this morning.
The premier may have shunned the auto-cue in light of a series of embarrassing technical issues in recent days.
As Rishi Sunak addressed the Conservative conference for the first time as Chancellor yesterday, the transmission went dead and he was left speaking into an empty vacuum.
His wasn't the only speech to be hampered by tech problems, with Home Secretary Priti Patel also struggling to read from a teleprompter and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab facing away from the camera during his address.
There were fears among senior Tories that the issues could affect Boris Johnson's address today.
'It's not that hard to get the auto-cue just below camera eye level,' one said. 'Let's hope it's sorted for the PM tomorrow.'
Mr Johnson's speech was not blighted by the mis-positioned autocue that had affected other senior ministers - including Rishi Sunak yesterday
The premier may have shunned the auto-cue in light of a series of embarrassing technical issues in recent days
Boris Johnson's speech, the key points:
Business leaders waiting for a virtual question and answer with Boris Johnson and Mr Sunak faced a buffering screen for almost an hour yesterday.
The session was delayed by around 50 minutes, according to the Times, with one business owner telling the paper: 'It's been a complete shambles to be honest.'
Yesterday, Rishi Sunak came under fire for an awkward party conference speech beset by technical problems, with his eyes 'darting back and forth' as he tried to read the auto-cue.
The Chancellor's speech cut out shortly after it began and he struggled to read off a teleprompter that appeared to have been put in the wrong place, with the camera angle changing several times.
Baffled viewers also said he sounded like he was 'accepting an Oscar', hitting out at his 'victorious-sounding' speech despite dire warnings of tax raises and economic hardship to come.
Allies of the Chancellor yesterday blamed the way Conservative HQ had set up the auto-cue and podium for the awkward imagery.
Just two days earlier, exhibitors were temporarily unable to log into the virtual conference as Michael Gove participated in a 'fireside chat'.
And it comes in the wake of the test and trace shambles, with the news that 16,000 people who tested Covid-positive last week went unreported because of a 'computer glitch'.
Yesterday's gaffe was a rare misstep for Sunak, who has won plaudits for his slick, well put-together appearance during the pandemic, in contrast to the bumbling performances of some of his ministerial colleagues.
It was also a surprising blunder for his highly-rated PR guru Allegra Stratton, the former BBC and ITV News journalist who is widely seen as being behind the Chancellor's positive approval ratings among the British public.
Ms Stratton is the favourite to front the government's new White House-style daily press briefings set to begin later this month.
She has been credited with helping to boost the Chancellor's public profile and increasing his popularity during the coronavirus crisis, having joined his team earlier this year.
Boris Johnson was also said to be impressed by her impact and is thought to have sounded her out to front the new televised press briefings.
She is now on the final shortlist following a day of interviews and screen tests at No 10 a few weeks ago.
The Prime Minister is expected to interview Ms Stratton and the other candidate for the six-figure salaried position – a 'left-field' BBC presenter, according to sources – to test their personal 'chemistry'.
Ms Stratton, a 39-year-old mother-of-two, quit ITV News to join Mr Sunak's increasingly powerful Treasury operation.
Today, the PM admitted 2020 'has not been the year we imagined' but insisted the devastating effects of the pandemic would not prevent the government pushing its 'levelling up' agenda after Brexit.
As Rishi Sunak addressed the Conservative conference for the first time as Chancellor yesterday, the transmission went dead and he was left speaking into an empty vacuum
Excel bungle masked daily cases hitting 11,000
Yesterday, a staggering rise in coronavirus cases was recorded in Britain as the Department of Health announced 12,594 more positive tests – more than triple the 4,368 that were recorded a fortnight ago.
Last Monday's data, which would usually be a good point of reference, is now unreliable because of a catastrophic counting error at Public Health England, meaning September 21 is the most recent Monday with an accurate number.
Officials confirmed that the huge number was a clean count that did not include any cases left over from the weekend's data blunder at Public Health England that saw 16,000 test results from the past week tacked onto Sunday night's update.
Instead, the more than 12,000 new infections emerged after the fog had cleared from the counting catastrophe – believed to have been caused by an Excel problem in outdated software at PHE – and marked one of the biggest one-day rises so far for Britain.
The extraordinary meltdown was caused by an Excel spreadsheet containing lab results reaching its maximum size, and failing to update. Some 15,841 cases between September 25 and October 2 were not uploaded to the government dashboard.
As well as underestimating the scale of the outbreak in the UK, critically the details were not passed to contact tracers, meaning people exposed to the virus were not tracked down.
The technical issue has now been resolved by splitting the Excel files into batches.
Mr Johnson - deprived of his usual interaction with a live audience - he said he was 'working for the day when life is back to normal'.
But he said returning to the same way of doing things would not be enough, and the government was determined to 'build back better'.
It was 'in crises like this' that real change could be made, and he would seize the moment to do so.
He nodded to the rising Conservative anger about infringement of civil liberties and strangling the economy, he said he 'deeply regretted' the restrictions the government was imposing.
The premier also delivered an angry response to claims that he has 'lost his mojo' and not fully recovered from his own brush with coronavirus, offering to 'arm wrestle or leg wrestle' to prove them wrong.
Acknowledging the weariness of the public with the battle against coronavirus, Mr Johnson said: 'The fact is we are not in Birmingham... there is no-one to clap and heckle...'
'I don't know about you, but I have had more than enough of this disease that attacks not only human beings but so many of the greatest things about our country – our pubs, our clubs, our football, our theatre and all the gossipy gregariousness and love of human contact that drives the creativity of our economy.'
He also praised the Chancellor as he sought to dispel speculation about a rift between the two over the response to the crisis.
'Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, has come up with some brilliant expedients to help business, to protect jobs and livelihoods but, let's face it, he has done things that no Conservative chancellor would have wanted to do except in times of war or disaster.'
The Prime Minister said the UK economy went into the pandemic with 'chronic underlying problems' which he vowed to address.
'Long-term failure to tackle the deficit in skills, inadequate transport infrastructure, not enough homes people could afford to buy, especially young people.
'And far too many people across the whole country who felt ignored and left out, that the Government was not on their side.
'And so we can't now define the mission of this country as merely to restore normality, that isn't good enough.
'In the depths of the Second World War, when just about everything had gone wrong, the government sketched out a vision of the post-war new Jerusalem that they wanted to build, and that is what we're doing now, in the teeth of this pandemic.'