The College Group

We have returned from the last party conference this year. Party conference season 2011 is officially over. There’s a few tired faces in the office and a few team members are nursing their ‘conference cold’.  Social and mainstream media are still coming to terms with Tim Farron’s leadership ambitions, Ed Miliband’s speech and Theresa May’s cat gaffe. Before we start planning for our 2012 party conference season, here are our thoughts on 2011:

A ‘flat’ season

Conferences 16 months after a general election are always the quietest and in some ways the dullest – there’s not the excitement of the election post-mortem, new ministers, new inquiries.  This set of conferences had the feeling of a dull team meeting which was held ”because it was in the diary”.

Indeed, the last three weeks of the 2011 party conference season have been a largely unmemorable experience in the Midland and Northern post industrial cities of Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. The word ‘flat’ has been used by many political commentators such as Bruce Anderson to describe the conference season and it would be hard to disagree with this description.  It’s the first time anyone can remember when there were empty seats at a Conservative leader’s speech whilst the loss of seven hundred Liberal Democrat councillors clearly left a significant gap in the usual democratic throng at Liberal Democrat conference. Ed Miliband’s speech which was widely viewed as a ‘car crash’ can’t have put a spring in the step of many Labour delegates apart from ardent trade unionists departing from Liverpool. As one member of the CPP team put it: “In the 24 Labour Conferences I have attended, Ed Miliband’s speech was the worst I have ever heard.  It had no coherence, no vision, no passion and a set of bizarre policies which were unravelling before the evening was out.  I doubt we will ever hear anything more about “a new bargain for the economy” (unless Poundland adopts it for their new stores) and I bet that the Labour frontbench will cringe whenever they are asked how they define a ‘predator’ or a ‘producer’ business.”

It was rumoured that the Coalition Partners had purposefully turned down the volume of their conferences feeling that ‘tub thumping’ speeches might look inappropriate with the economic storms swirling around Greece and other Eurozone economies. Whatever the edict from the respective leaderships, we the delegates  saw the two Coalition partners acting managerially and Her Majesty’s Opposition going through their ‘mea culpas’ and testing ‘moral socialism’ on the electorate.

Diversity in fringes

The divide in fringes is now greater than ever.  The more general, political, often newspaper-hosted fringes are of real interest to the party activist and these are now enormous events.  Elsewhere, there are small rooms with a think-tank, a sponsor and a Minister on the platform, with 15 people in the audience who are probably professionals in the field being discussed.  Although to the outside world this may look to be a failure, for the sponsor it is very likely a great success: they got the Minister to listen to the 10 minute pitch and then have to respond.  However, if the Minister arrives after the sponsor’s pitch, this of course is a complete disaster.

In terms of content, themes were beginning to emerge in the fringes for the 2015 General Election. The right wing of the Conservative Party continue to push for a ‘in or out’ referendum on Europe and a more purist and radical form of localism. The Labour Party continue to struggle with whether to embrace Big Society or not and the Liberal Democrats missed few opportunities to Tory Bash and discuss when and how to best divorce the Party that put them back into Government after 80 years in the political wilderness.

Future leaders

Speaking to many Labour MPs it was clear that no-one outside his close shadow-ministerial team thinks he can win the next election, but strangely no-one was talking about getting rid of him.  Both Iain Duncan Smith and Ming Campbell were leaders of their respective Parties who got dumped before they could fight a general election, but somehow it isn’t what Labour does.

Conservative representatives are still very sceptical of David Cameron.  In the packed hall for George Osborne’s speech, they gave William Hague a far bigger ovation than Cameron. On the contrary, Boris was bigger than ever: the biggest performance on stage, the biggest stand in the exhibition and the biggest lapel badges.  The battle to become the next leader is well underway, with David Cameron knows who he is backing.  He said that George Osborne chose “The Man Who Would Be King” for his audio book reading for the blind, while he reminds us of Boris Johnson’s past problems with “The Joy of… Cycling.”

So there you are…

There is more that could be written but we’ll stop here and leave you to ponder the above whilst we retreat into our first conference-free weekend. A good rest, will no doubt, help when Parliament resume its normal business next week.