Just Boris Johnson talking to a brick, NBD

Boris Johnson raised the spirits of the Conservative annual conference by telling them that they could win the next general election outright despite the opinions polls and recent defections to Ukip.

In a speech which showed once again that even if Boris Johnson is not the deepest thinker in modern politics, he is surely the one who tells the best jokes, he discussed a factory in the marginal Labour seat of Newcastle-Under-Lyne which is making fire bricks for London’s housing market.

He held one of the fire bricks aloft, and at one point in his 30 minute speech, actually talked to it, telling it that it was not alone.

“Behold this brick, amigos,” he said, as he held the object aloft.

This brick was given to me yesterday in Newcastle Under Lyme, in factory that only started last year and is now capable of making 80 million of these objects a year.

If you want to know why that factory started to hire and fire - sorry hire people and fire bricks, I should say – in huge numbers, look at the sky line of London rising and sprouting with extraordinary growth like a speeded up David Attenborough nature film about the return of spring to the Canadian tundra – and that was why Ed Miliband was silent on the key issue facing our country… the economy.

The difference between us and Labour is that they talk, and we do. An ounce of Tory action is worth a ton of Labour fury.

He added: “We will need one billion of these bricks – so, brick, you will not be alone.”

During a passage attacking excessive EU regulation, he also suggested that a suitable fisheries policy would be to “chuck Salmond overboard then eat the kippers for breakfast.” Kipper is a nickname for members and supporter of UKIP.

More: Boris Johnson said this about Ukip, just before his former deputy Richard Barnes defected