There are some things that I just don’t understand about the party conference season.
It’s the same party order every year. First the TUC, then the Lib Dems, then Labour, then the Tories. Year after year. Why? Who chose it? I presume it’s a broadcasting driven reason, to ensure equal distribution of media coverage, but I do wonder whether there’s implicit advantage at being last, and whether there are unpublished rules. There certainly can’t be advantages in being first…
It’s the same places. It’s Bournemouth, Brighton or Blackpool every year. Why the seaside? Why the infatuation with locations starting with the letter B? Is it that attendees insist on bracing sea air to keep them awake during a particularly long speech? A passion for fish and chips? Security concerns? Venue size? Glasgow has the SECC, London the QE2 conference centre to name but two others, and I’m sure there are some large provincial towns (Norwich? Salisbury? Whitby?) that could use a few thousand people turning up to help with the local economy.
The seeming lack of actual debate, and certainly revised opinions. Perhaps it’s just the coverage on television and it’s fetish for leadership problems. Perhaps there really is a serious interchange of ideas away from the conference floor. But the appearance, at least to me, is that each party’s leadership reluctantly turns up at the venue, gives a few speeches, poses (with wife) for a few toe-curling “smiling and waving at the crowd” pictures, and then steadfastly ignores what the delegates vote for in terms of policy. Can anybody tell me how often are there substantive changes of policy off the back of what the delegates vote on?
I suppose it’s a suitable end to the ’silly season’, where we finally see the end to the annual hand-wringing over exam standards, the “abnormally” hot/wet (delete as appropriate) weather, plus getting far too excited about a host of minor issues that really are, like the party conferences, an annual event nobody really worries that much about, and are of no seemingly useful consequence.
September 26th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Have you ever tried organising a conference? I have - and it’s not easy. Admittedly I had only about 2 dozen delegates but they were from 13 countries! Even so finding a venue at the right time that has the right facilities at the right price can be tricky. Obviously the seaside resorts have had the practice from previous years to take a lot of the strain out of the Party Conferences for both delegates and suppliers, and I imagine the accommodation available is cheap enough not to put off the humblest party members from attending should they wish. I agree with you though about the order issue and that the whole business is driven by ritual rather than utility. However, I suspect there will be some legal requirement for each party to have an A.G.M which will have been the original raisond’etre for the conferences, and if these have to take place within 12 months of the last, it makes it difficult to change the order without bringing them all forward and into the summer season. Which is roughly where we came in!
September 27th, 2007 at 11:27 am
I’ve just come across this link at the BBC, which answers at least the ‘Why always in the same place?’:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6993552.stm
Worth a read if you’re perplexed, as I am, by it all.