At the Labour party conference in Liverpool last week, Andy Burnham floated the idea of electoral reform. This week in Birmingham, the Tories have come up with a plan of their own: voting with their feet. Let’s just say that the Conservative party conference is extremely civilised.
No queues for the food concessions. No queues to get into any of the halls. In fact, the organisers are delighted that anyone has turned up at all.
This doesn’t feel like a high-octane meeting of a party preparing for government. More like a home counties meeting of the Rotary Club. On current evidence, if there is a general election next year – as Kemi Badenoch is trying to convince us there will be – then the Tories won’t be active participants.
More like vaguely disinterested observers. For these four days, Birmingham is a city where you can sit and watch the world pass you by. Not that those who have turned up seem unhappy.
Rather, they are thrilled to find themselves still alive. This time last year, there was a possibility that they faced extinction: under threat from left and right and with a leader in Kemi who looked unlikely to last six months. Since then things have stabilised as Robert Jenrick has been stopped from pulling out their ventilator in the intensive care unit.
They are now merely an endangered species. The conference centre is a safari park attraction where we get to see the remnants of the Tory party in a protected habitat. The morning’s activities take place in what is optimistically called the main hall: a hard-to-find side room with a capacity of about 200.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
