Those were the three weeks they were,-except that they really weren't. At the time it may feel like a feast, with one course quickly following another, but in the same Chinese style it isn't long before you wonder if the conferences really happened. Apart from boosting the the bars, hotels and conference centres of three cities not normally blessed with a surfeit of tourism one searches for any lasting significance at all.
Birmingham and the Lib Dems have been overwhelmingly forgotten. There are big public concerns about unconstrained immigration, the role of the EU in determining British issues, and the abuse of human rights legislation to circumvent what is seen as the spirit of the law. All law is about the balance human rights and obligations and to have a separate code placed on top of that concept looks like removing this essential basis. The Lib Dems, by turning their backs on all criticisms of these things, simply reinforced their own irrelevance as anything but a protest and pressure group, a role to which they are likely to return in the 2015 General Election. Leadership of the nation? No sign of it in Liverpool.
Next up was Old Labour or Labour Classic depending on how it would like to be branded. Their chosen venue was Birmingham, a city which is now really the outer fringe of the south rather than an icon of the north. It's not too far either from the Labour intellectual heartlands of north London and Islington where Milipedia and Peter Simple's Hampstead Thinkers of old took root. The most significant moment, and the only one of fundamental and fundamentalist importance was that Milipedian pause when Ed gave the union carthorses and friends the opportunity to boo Blair and signal that the more inclusive, centrist version of the party which won three successive General Elections is dead and buried. That hopeful and sunny evening of the bussed-in crowds in Downing Street when Blair first came to power in 1997 is ancient history. The booing was the equivalent of scrawling graffiti over the party's most successful recent electoral run of power. An extraordinary but stunningly revealing moment. The party has gone back to its envy filled class resentment homelands. It feels comfortable there. Does enough of the electorate though really feel comfortable with a group which actively and often passionately hates large sections of the community? Again, 2015 looms.
The Tories in Manchester, a place well beyond the ken and interest of many of them, were probably bound to disappoint,-and did. The Theresa/Ken catflap gave the BBC in particular a mouthwatering opportunity to make both look silly and who can blame them for taking it? Wouldn't you? Theresa May was guilty of over egging a minor though true element of a legal case and Ken Clarke seemed to be the only person viewing who hadn't peviously heard about it. Putting the boot into his cabinet colleague wasn't clever. It was just buffoonish and reinforced a widely held old Tory stereotype. Once that pantomime was over it was on to David Cameron's intended rallying speech. Here was the big opportunity for inspirational leadership in a speech from the heart. Speeches from reminder bulletpoint notes are fine and can achieve that. Those which are almost 100% pre-scripted can not. How is it that we have three party leaders who can not or dare not speak off the cuff directly to the viewers and attendees? The ridiculous practice of pre-leaking of content so as to grab the breakfast TV programmes is partly to blame but it comes at a huge cost in credibility and should be abandoned.
Cameron had a great opportunity for a rousing Prime Ministerial oration, full of simple clarity about the true state of Britain Plc, his vision of where it must go and how to get there. He blew it. His rambling hour over, the Conservatives headed south from Manchester no more inspired than when they headed north and with sighs of relief more than excitement. Hopefully those whose seats lined up with windows (not a Virgin Railways speciality) will have spent the journey not on their Ipads but looking out and seeing the vast differences between the various areas through which they sped before the welcome view of the M25 sped into sight. They must understand and embrace the north, not turn their backs on it.As a practical souvenir of their trip and confirmation that they heard the voice of the north while up there the Party must not be swayed by their media savy and well heeled southern groups into abandoning the for once visionary and highly necessary HS2 project. If that is the only solid thing to come out of their autumn excursion they will at least have nailed something tangible into place. The rest,- for all three parties,- was mainly tedium and did nothing to increase customer satisfaction with what are increasingly being labelled as "the political classes", a group unfortunately slotted in somewhere between bankers and estate agents rather than where the nation's leaders should be.
The overwhelming feeling after all three conferences is that visionary leadership just wasn't there. That explains the Chinese banquet feeling. On now to the new Parliamentary season............
