The end of the Conservative Party Conference on Wednesday marked the end of this season , another parliamentary break between the brief return of most MPs from the summer hols and the start of the autumn term session proper. It all began with the shadow Labour Party, alias the TUC,meeting for their miserabalist few days of class warfare and boss-baiting and hating, moved through the LibDems self entramelling gathering in Brighton and then on to the launch of New Ed in rainswept Manchester and finally Dave's response to it all in Birmingham.
The slab faced TUC and the dancing in the daisies LibDems have already largely been forgotten, if they were ever remembered. They had some similarities, embracing as they did class war heavy (TUC) and class war lite (LibDems) . The LibDems come across as nicer but in reality are barely less intolerant of anything contrary to or questioning of their tangled and self-strangling roots in illiberalism curiously peddled as liberalism. Many of their delegates seemed to see a permanent role as a component of coalitions , preferably of the left. This capitalises on the possibility that most of the uncommitted electorate would rather vote "none of the above" if offered the option.
In Manchester Ed did well in establishing a sort of weird credibility that he could, just could, be a possible future Prime Minister . Of the three main party leaders he made the most upward and forward progress. A week ago it looked as if that might set Dave an almost unanswerable problem, but in fact he handled the situation well and in the only way he could. He doesn't do evangelical peppered with photo op pictures of glistening eyes, outstretched arms and raised head. That's all for the better as the stomach soon begins to churn if faced with too many of those. He told it straight; "We are in the poo, more poo than we had dared imagine when we took over from the 2 Eds and their master, Gordon, and it's going to take a while longer to sort it, but sort it we will." Sub themes were that he wasn't into class warfare but would prefer things which may seem to be restricted to the "privileged" to be available to all. Thus the local sink comp should be as good as Eton. No shortage of aspiration then.
Now as the dust settles, what were the main takeways from these gatherings?
First of all they have become a series of pre-vetted and pre-scripted corporate style presentations and are the duller for that. As result much public interest in them has gone and most people see only the few highlight clips on the early evening and 10 o'clock national TV news programmes.
The big thing though was that none of the three party leaders came across as inhabitants of planet earth. None seem capable of normal conversation or empathy. All fail the simple test of "Could they really sit in a pub/cafe/train or bus (would they be there in the first place?) and have a real and comfortable, enquiring, non patronising or lecturing conversation with whoever they sat down next to?" or "Would you enjoy a relaxed hour or two with them anywhere at any time of the day just chatting about life, realities, ideas or would they even have any real interest in so doing?" The answers have to be "No". They are just not , despite their differences,the sort of people most would really enjoy spending time with. None of them has shown one iota of a "wow" factor , nor do any go anywhere near producing a "I'll follow that person" response. There was and is not one iota of charisma or sign of good old fashioned leadership ability between them. At the conferences there was no big vision but a lot of divisive "Yah boo" stuff about wealth and class. That gets boring. There was no willingness to accept social realities,-eg that there are many who do milk the welfare system which in its present form is unaffordable anyway or that tax dodging isn't the preserve of the rich and wealth is not a sin. There are many well off people who do pay vast amounts of taxes, do good things and are worthy job-creating citizens. There are also millions of less well off people who do work hard for small rewards who resent carrying the freeloaders about which politicians, unions and councils tend to be in denial.
To cap it all, none of the Big Three display any credible warmth or humour. To most they just aren't likeable people. There's little trust either.
The danger of this disconnect between leading politicians and their electorate is a continuing lessening of general interest in politics. This in turn can only impact on the quality of parliamentary candidates, already unimpressive in some cases. That has serious implications for a robust British democracy.
That leaves the door wide open for someone to seize the moment ,walk confidently and cheerfully onto the stage, sweep all the rubbish, indecision and prevarication aside ,talk plain interesting and even entertaining English , ram home a few truths and run off with the ball.
Regardless of other possible perceived flaws, the chances are enough of the the voters would say "Yes,- lead us!"
Hello Boris? Never say never.
