The SNP conference has had to get bigger as the party has grown. Those who’ve been coming for years are a tad unsettled by quite how big and slick this event is. The exhibition hall is much bigger and is packed with lobbyists and big corporate stands, including a McDonald’s stall. The hall is bigger, the fringe events organised by lobbyists, too, and at first glance, it looks rather like a mainstream party conference: not one packed with eccentricities like the Ukip or Lib Dem conferences. That’s unsurprising given the SNP is a party of government and given it has a chunk of MPs in Westminster.
But all of the party’s MPs, MSPs and activists who I’ve met over the past few days say the same thing: it still feels like a family. They say that most people know each other, and those who are new are welcomed in with open arms, too.
What’s more striking than that, though, is quite how normal this conference feels. It is the most normal conference I’ve been to, possibly ever. Sure, they are still doing things that most non-political people would think odd, such as sitting in a windowless hall debating whether or not this amendment should go forward, and starting far too many sentences with the exclamation ‘conference!’. But this doesn’t look like a conference stuffed with the political class or solely middle class activists from a reasonably nice part of London, for instance. It doesn’t feel as far removed from normal human behaviour as others (though it is the end of a long conference season and it is possible I have forgotten what normal human behaviour, let alone natural light and non-conference food, looks like).
Parties that I’ve attended have felt more like cheery suburban weddings where friends are catching up, rather than frenetic networking events with many people preening or parties where everyone sort of hates each other (though every political party has those events).
And even though the media is not well-liked here (there was a furious BBC fringe yesterday where activists complained about a plethora of issues that they felt show the BBC has neglected Scotland, and the party is currently debating a motion on the BBC Charter review), everyone has been extremely friendly to me personally, even when they find out I’m a journalist from the Spectator. I caught a cab back from the town centre last night with three women who were SNP members who kindly offered me a place so I could get back safely, and we nattered the whole way back very pleasantly indeed.
Nicola Sturgeon has been wandering around in that slick exhibition hall, just talking to activists. She hasn’t been sweeping around with a massive entourage to protect her from her own party, or been hiding in a hotel room until she must go on the conference stage.
The benefit of the SNP being so good at grassroots politics is that it attracts a membership that hasn’t been reading political speeches since adolescence and which hasn’t lapsed into politicalese. There is one thing that unites the party, which is Scottish independence, and beyond that unity there is a range of views on all sorts of policies. Independence would be the worst thing for the SNP as a party, as it would mean all those differences would be far more obvious and difficult to resolve because the one great mission that united the party would be realised. But it’s an impressive force, and this has been an impressive conference.
Comments