I Can Make You Tory

Beginning his set by welcoming himself to the stage despite already standing on it, Leo Kearse's control of the room seems to evaporate before he's even had the chance to impose his bold titular claim on the punters. I Can Make You Tory is his hour-long exercise in political solicitation, although his methods seem to undermine his surprisingly half-hearted intent. 

Kearse deals in broad strokes because they suit his blunt agenda, by which I mean greed, not conservatism. He's a big-C Conservative without any of the values or principles one might attach to the ideology. There's an underlying irony in his indictment of liberal "snowflake" culture (which he argues is just looking for things to be offended about), when he appears outraged by the most minor of left-wing hypocrisies.

He's forging a similar path to equivalent right-wing comics such as Geoff Norcott, but without most of his measured conviction and poise. Despite a few solid zingers against Corbyn, The Guardian and about 300 of the 328 official genders (he's brought along the actual list), he never really grips his audience with the captive persuasion implied by his title.

He needn't be nervous, for after all he's in a safe space (not that he'd appreciate that term), but there's a jittery disposition to him that suggests he's wary of how his mostly tame material will fare with a liberal Fringe crowd. Had he taken his eponymous assertion by the mantle and made the jokes, rather than the contrived complaints, the fulcrum of his argument, perhaps the result would've been more convincing.