Nige takes to the stage offering empty promises and anger – and the crowd love it | John Crace

Amid pounding music, dry ice and pyrotechnics, the charlatan’s charlatan performed like a TV evangelist

“Up for an adventure” a sign declared outside the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre. You certainly need to be. After navigating a half-hour queue to get through security, a group of us were told we needed to go back outside, walk 10 minutes and then go through security again to reach the media centre.

Which would have been fine except the staff at the new entrance had been given instructions not to admit the media, and told us to go back to where we had started and queue for security a third time. The theme for this year’s Reform party conference is “Ready for government”. It would have been nice if they were ready for their own conference first. Piss ups and breweries.