Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Tory Party Conference, Inc.

The empty chairs for David Cameron’s speech said it all: the party conference is no longer a political event. This was my eleventh Tory conference, and, even in this short time, I’ve noticed a creeping corporate takeover.  The difference struck me yesterday, when I attended a packed fringe meeting in something called the ‘Freedom Zone’. It was set up to discuss banned topics: how to cut taxes, the case for a referendum on EU membership, etc. The crowd was younger, of a libertarian bent — all activists and enthusiasts of some kind, a refreshing change from the sanitised and often lifeless feel of the rest of the official conference.

As I moved back to the official venue, it felt like I was leaving the politics zone and entering the corporate zone. I’m left feeling a bit nostalgic for the old conferences: seaside meetings, sometimes bust-ups, between the party leadership and party members. But lobbyists are steadily supplanting activists across all political groups. The TUC didn’t even bother to stage a proper conference this year, staying in London. Its members effectively merged their annual shindig with the Labour Party, to which it provides 85 per cent of the funding.
 
This shifts the gravity, though. At many fringe groups, the typical question now will come from John Smith from Special Interests Inc, asking why more money isn’t being spent on X. And they’re often not even questions: more like little speeches to press their organisation’s case. Anyone who went up to Manchester trying to work out what the Tory Party feels about life will have left none the wiser. The “mood of the hall” is no longer a valuable political indicator.
 
At their best, conferences are an Edinburgh Festival for politics — ideas discussed in a wonderfully varied setting.



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