Ed Miliband scored one triumph over David Cameron and Nick Clegg during the conference season: the Labour leader spoke to a full hall. To go to all the autumn political jamborees is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it – and that person is me. Both Cameron and Clegg delivered perorations to auditoriums with hundreds of empty seats so the coalition is leaving the Conservative and Liberal Democrat faithful cold as well as stoking the anger of the nation.
A proper assessment of the parties and leaders isn’t possible until it’s time to clear up after the lord mayor’s parade. Miliband’s speech was poorly delivered and if he’d really worked on the text since last July, writing it himself, I suggest next September that he gets somebody to write if for him the weekend before. But the wooden performance shouldn’t overshadow an important break with the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown New Labour past, Miliband’s authentic social democracy an alternative to the neo-liberal misery of the Con-Dem coalition which should grow increasingly attractive as living standards plummet and unemployment soars.
Yet there is no denying a power vacuum sucked much of the life out of the Labour conference, the denunciations of ministers and righteous demands for justice falling on the deaf ears of ministers who weren’t in Liverpool or listening.
The Liberal Democrats in Birmingham like power if not the Tories, but are prepared to put up with the Conservatives now Clegg’s party has moved from emphasising common ground to seeking disagreements in the hope of developing an independent voice.
It is a myth, of course, that the Lib Dem tail wags the Tory dog but it is also wrong of the left to deny, as I’ve argued in these pages before, that the yellow peril acts as a brake (Europe, Human Rights Act, shackling unions?) on wilder Conservative ambitions and pushes it to do a few things (raise low paid out of income tax, postponing Trident) which should grace a Labour manifesto.
The hurdle I believe the Lib Dems will be unable to clear is proving the ups either equal or exceed the downs when austerity bites, Clegg’s lot giving Parliamentary permission to the Conservatives to unleash an economic fatwa and wreck the National Health Service.
After four nights and five days at the Conservative rally in Manchester, it’s easy to see the vulnerability of the Tories. The supposedly slick machine is ramshackle. A Fleet Street which hailed Dave as a glorious emperor, uncritically hailing every piece of spin before the election as the start of a magnificent reign, belatedly recognises Cameron wears no new clothes.
Women were repelled by his nakedness before men, hence the Prime Minister’s apology for sexist digs at Angela Eagle and Nadine Dorries. Eagle, I’m sure, is more insulted by what Cameron is doing to women, withdrawing childcare and punishing kids with poverty, than the bullying Buller Boy finding inspiration from the preposterous figure of Michael “Calm down, dear” Winner. And most women agree with Eagle, which is why sorry seeming to be the easiest word will win back few votes. Fur flying in the cat fight between Theresa May and Ken Clarke was a weird way to play out in public a deep ideological divide in a Conservative Party where anything European triggers a rabid response from the majority and lip service is paid to human rights when the Tories are as authoritarian, reactionary and nasty as ever. If Margaret Thatcher could be roused from her dotage, the Iron Lady would feel at home in a new Conservative Party which behind the fuzzy tree is frighteningly similar to the old.
Cameron’s deleted exhortation in his speech to pay off credit and card stores exposed economic lunacy and the ivory tower politics of a premier with little idea of the lives of the people he’s squeezing. I’d like to see his sums, for instance, which show how a public servant enduring a
two-year pay rise freeze as Retail Price Index inflation climbs 5.2 per cent, and their wages were cut 3p in the £1 to fund a pension, could reduce their debts. The truth of Cameronomics is they’ll be plunged deeper into the red.
But looking back at three conferences which failed to set pulses racing I’ve come to the conclusion that fixed parliaments, with the next general election inked in the diary for May 2015, sap much of the excitement. Take away the prospect of the country going to the polls and conferences lose an edge. So I’d suggest all three parties focus on an all singing-all dancing United States-style convention the year before the election, autumn 2014 if the coalition lasts, and in other years hold what would be more of a political festival.
In Liverpool, I bumped into a Durham miner who couldn’t afford a £40 day pass so was searching for meetings outside the security zone while inside the wire the lobbyists were buttonholing the Shadow Cabinet. That can’t be right. I’d love to see Labour’s shindig run Thursday night to Sunday with, say, the Friday reserved for heavy duty policy and organisation and the rest thrown open to ideas and campaigns. How about it?
