The problem with Party Conferences is that unless you announce lots of new initiatives and policies the media hordes have nothing to write about. And when you don’t feed the media beast, it turns round and bites you. If journalists have nothing better to write about they rehash old stories, preferably involving a good old fashioned bit of sleaze.
And that’s exactly what has happened in the last two days. Journalist after journalist approached me yesterday with faces riven with desperation. ‘We haven’t got a story’, they bleated in unison. ‘What can we write about?’ So they did what they usually do in these circumstances and invented a row. My friend David Hencke was scurrying hither and thither grinning from ear to ear as he regaled me with tales of underhand goings on which he was about to expose.
So the lesson to Tory spin doctors is: keep the journalists happy because you’ll regret it if you don’t.
Yesterday’s conference saw the innovation of a political version of Dragon’s Den, where ‘A’ List candidates were invited to put forward a policy proposal which was then torn apart by Rachel Elnar, Oliver Letwin, Michael Brown and the ultimate dragon herself, Miss Ann Widdecombe, spinster of this parish. The first five candidates were all women, which led Widdecombe to exclaim: “Are there any men left in this Party?” which predictably brought the Tory house down. The audience could then vote on keypads which idea was best. The whole things was thought up and staged by Nick Pisani, the former Editor of BBC’s Question Time’ who now worked as the Conservative Party’s Director of Presentation.
The Dragon’s Den session demonstrated how Tory conferences have changed. The Politburo style platform seating disappeared years ago, but there was still a kind of Stalinist control freakery about the sessions and who was allowed to speak. That seems to have gone now, with a lot more open debates on important subjects. Yesterday, for example, there was a half hour debate on the conflict between people’s wish to travel freely and the environmental damage done by free flights.
Guest speakers included Shami Chakrabarti from Liberty, author Jeanette Winterson (who complained about being ‘taxed up the arse’ by Gordon Brown!) and Camila Batmanghelidjh from Kids Company.
This was not a stunt. Shami Chakrabarti came to the conference because she wanted to continue a genuine dialogue. Liberty now has far more in common with the Conservative Party than New Labour. Camila Batmanghelidjh has been inputting policy ideas to Iain Duncan Smith for years and they are being taken up by the Social Justice Policy Group which he heads.
If this doesn’t demonstrate what is changing in the Tory Party, nothing will.
