Image via Wikipedia

An odd thing happened to the Conservative Party conference this year - it changed.

I have been to many conferences, although to be honest it is only in the past five or so years that I have endured the entirety of the event. What was odd was the atmosphere of virtual disdain for the process of conference - not just from the party faithful but from those outside the hall.

I arrived on the Sunday afternoon and was walking to the venue from the hotel. I ran in to the remnants of the anti-cuts demonstration that had taken place. I would add at this point that by calling this 'anti-cuts' I do not intend to give succour to the idea that there are cuts, for the reality lies somewhere closer to the 'slower growth' school of thought than it does to cuts. I leave it to the economists of our time to debate the preference of real terms growth against cash growth!

I chose not to wear my conference badge as I had surmised that with 35,000 people on the streets of Manchester there was no telling whether this would tip over in to something more than a gathering of like-minded souls. As I walked past the scattered and somewhat drilgy looking protestors staggering back to their lairs I heard them mutter 'Tory tosser', or some such other insult which they considered would upset me. This led me to wonder later about the position of political discourse and whether the nature of politics is now reverting to that happy place where those who govern best are governing and those who do opposition best are in opposition. Demonstrations and insults are clearly the preserve of the Left whilst reform and change is the preserve of the Right. As for the Lib Dems they like neither.

Putting aside the Lib Dems, something which both main parties could obligingly agree we should, then the simple fact is that the history of the past 150 years of Parliament indicates that the Conservatives are those who sort out the economy, legal and social system whilst the Left are those who come in and destroy it again with their noisy sophistry. Thus, the circle begins again.

The left are not great reformers. Even with the NHS, something which the left whine on about interminably, it was the case that the work for its introduction had been done two years before the Government of Atlee came to power in 1945. In fact there had been debate within the cross-party War cabinet as to whether they should even publish what was seen to be an ambitious proposition laid out in the Beveridge report. Despite Labour rhetoric today their party actually opposed the idea of the NHS and Beveridge showed a great deal of frustration at the stance of Ernest Bevin who called it a 'social ambulance scheme' and wanted it delayed.

I digress, but the point is that the Labour party are not radicals and they are certainly not innovators. It is now difficult to know where they stand in this current crisis. If they believe in slower cuts then surely all they are suggesting is that this crisis would drag on for considerably longer - twice as long by their reasoning. This is also precisely the same thing they said in the early 80's when they ranged against the Lawson budgets that reduced expenditure and they were proved at best wrong and at worst dangerous.

The recent changes to the shadow cabinet seem to bring only youth into their front-bench but does little to assuage to commentariat that they understand the need for rationality in a crisis. Labour seem to not have grasped that this is a serious crisis that could easily topple into the need for a Government of national unity if the implosions forecast in the EU were to even partly materialise. This would leave them not only bereft of policy but also naked in the eyes of the public.

Back to the Conservative conference? well it lacked everything that you could imagine it might lack. There was no debate and there was no place for activists at what has become a somewhat media dominated enterprise where the media hacks discuss late in to the night who is in and who is out and those MPs who can be bothered to attend greet each other as long-lost friends. The Parliamentary party is clearly not connected in a way which ordinary members and voters would imagine but then I suppose there are 300 of them and organising that many people in the tunnels and vestibules of Parliament is a job worthy of only the finest shepherd.

I think the Conservative party needs to be radicals with their conference. Let us change the conference so that they do not waste the time and money of the membership and are open to the greater public. The party needs to stop treating members and activists like fools.

• move conference to a bi-annual event
• in the off-year hold regional conferences where MPs can meet the public and there is no closed shop
• open up a youth camp on the Glastonbury scale - there were many more young people at conference then I can remember
• make the secure zone a real secure zone where party members can engage with politicians and ban journalists and lobbyists - to be fair the party did try something like this in Manchester but it needs to be expanded
• stop making announcements to the press before they are announced in the conference hall.
• hold them in places that have cheap accommodation and don't seem to ramp up the costs because the 'Tories are in town'.

Like many things in life the best time to change them are when the economic circumstances force change, maybe this is just another example.