Inside Boris Johnson’s hidden venue for Trump-style rally on final

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It comes as his Cabinet ministers struggled to fill even a cut-sized hall at Conservative Party Conference in Manchester.

Boris Johnson is set to deliver his keynote Tory Conference speech from his own ‘secret’ auditorium, the Mirror can reveal.

The PM is expected to give a Donald Trump-style rally on the final day of Conference on Wednesday.

It comes as his Cabinet ministers struggled to fill even a cut-sized hall at the annual event in Manchester.

Attendees were shocked to discover the ‘main auditorium’ at the conference centre was a fraction of the size of previous years, with around 600 seats.

By comparison, the Symphony Hall in Birmingham’s ICC, where previous conferences have held ministers’ speeches, holds 2,262 people.

And the main hall at the Brighton Centre, where Labour held their conference last week, holds as many as 3,000 – five times the capacity of the room where top ministers including Liz Truss and Oliver Dowden gave speeches today.

But party bosses have faced embarrassment in previous years, with all-but the most senior ministers failing to draw crowds and leaving hundreds of seats empty.

However, even this wasn’t enough to spare the blushes of some ministers this year.

Newly minted Trade Secretary Anne Marie Trevelyan delivered her speech this afternoon to a few dozen attendees – leaving hundreds of seats empty even in the pint-sized hall.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes preparations were underway today for the PM to deliver his speech from a private vanity venue.

The Mirror saw lighting rigs, speakers, staging and seating being put in place in a larger room at the Manchester Central conference venue.

It’s understood Mr Johnson will deliver his speech on Wednesday morning ‘in the round’, with the audience arranged around him on several sides in a similar way to Donald Trump’s rally speeches.

The PM has delivered speeches ‘in the round’ before.

His final rally before the 2019 election saw party bosses arrange activists on all sides of his podium.

Backstage doors for the secret venue were sealed, with posters warning the room had been “searched and sealed” by Police officers as part of “Operation Protector – Policing the Conservative Party Conference 2021”.

The Party and security officials faced widespread criticism when the conference was held in Manchester in 2017, when comedian Lee Nelson gained access to the venue and handed then…