The National:

THE bid by this UK Government to be ever more Trumpian seems to have extended into fantasies about crowd size.

Twitter user Ruth Mosalski was on the scene for a panel on Unionism at the Conservative conference in Manchester.

(They'll have a hard time topping Andrew Bowie's calls for control of Edinburgh Castle yesterday, though.)

Scotland Secretary Alister Jack was among those contributing, fresh from boasting about the Scottish Tories being "brought into line" on Brexit.

Mosalski said that he opened: "There's nothing like speaking to a full hall, and this is a full hall."

Jack seems to have a flexible definition of "a full hall", however, as the pictures taken by Mosalski show.

Some Twitter users kindly helped Jack out by posting images of an actual full hall, for comparison.

A few others suggested Jack had flubbed his joke – saying he perhaps meant to say "and this is nothing like a full hall".

Still, he shouldn't be too embarrassed about the room not being packed, with party member passes for conference costing £520...