Conference season is – mercifully – over. They have been pretty dismal affairs this year: none of the leaders’ speeches were up to much; there were few significant policy announcements, and less substantive debate. And, as John Harris demonstrated in his brilliant conference videos, there’s a weird and worrying disconnect between the blinkered optimism of the party hacks and the economic reality in the world outside the conference centre.[*] When the most exciting things to happen were a speech by a sixteen year old (though these happen so regularly as to be almost ritual) and a flap about a cat, you know things are bad.
So instead of looking at the winners, losers, ups and downs of the conference season – it’s hard to think of more than a handful of winners, in any case - here at Linstock we thought we’d go a bit more existential and ask, do parties need conferences at all?
Traditionally, party leaders hoped to achieve two things at Conference: inspire the base and persuade the public. Which of these is emphasised more varies from party to party, and on whether a party is in government or opposition. So Lib Dem conferences have – traditionally – been stronger on the former and weaker on the latter. Their democratic party rules, which mean that real policy is made at conference, is brilliant for making activists feel like the party is really theirs. When conference votes to decriminalise drugs, or unilaterally disarm, it’s been less brilliant at persuading the public that the Lib Dems are a serious party.
Conversely, from when David Cameron became Conservative leader until the last election, Conference was when the Conservatives demonstrated that Cameron could lead and the party was reasonable. Given that the leader’s speech is probably the only day of the year on which the opposition are guaranteed top billing on the evening news bulletins, it is no surprise that opposition parties tend to use Conference to reach out to the voters.
Party leaders always hope that conference will do both, and sometimes they do. Usually they achieve one or the other. When parties are in the midst of civil war, they can obviously be disastrous – as they were for the Tories under IDS – but it’s rare for all three parties to have bad conferences.
The striking thing about all the conferences this year is that, for the most part, none of them managed to either inspire activists or persuade voters. For the first time in decades, the hall wasn’t full for the beginning of the Prime Minister’s conference speech. Contrast this with early Blair, when the party had to lay on overflow rooms so many people wanted to hear him.
Now in government, grass roots debating and making of policy was inevitably far more muted than usual at Lib Dem Conference, with the party deliberately limiting hostile motions on the NHS bill. And at all the conferences, there were far less activists than there used to be. According to the FT, less than a quarter of attendees were ordinary party members. This is at least partly to do with money: Conservative Home calculated the average cost of attending Conservative Conference to be over £700. It’s hard to inspire your activists when they can’t even attend the conference.
This would matter less if party conferences had engaged the voters. But evidence suggests that they have not. The YouGov daily tracker of voting intentions has recorded steady support for Labour at around 41% of the electorate since early September, Conference failed to produce even the smallest bounce in the opinion polls. Similarly, the five YouGov polls published between the 12th and 16th of September all put the Lib Dems on 9% or 10%, as did the five most recent polls. It’s possible that there may have been a slight improvement in the Tories’ position. But it would be very slight – a point or two at most – and well within the margin of error.
Of course, there is one other reason parties have conferences: fundraising. It’s thought that the Conservative’s make £2 million from Conference, and all three parties turn a profit. But if Conference no longer works as a forum with which to communicate with either party members or the public, parties should think again about what they’re supposed to be, or even if they need them at all. Activists are far more likely to engage online than by going to conference, and sites such as Conservative Home are far more democratic and collaborative than conference has been for decades. Nor do Conservatives and Lib Dems need conference to persuade voters: they have the bully-pit of government to do that.
Labour, of course, don’t, but it’s still not clear that an annual national conference is the best way to talk to the public. Several regional conferences, for example, might allow the leadership to reduce the distance between them, activists and the public. Despite never taking place in London, conference still feels metropolitan and reinforces the disconnect between politicians and everyone else. Cynicism about politics and politicians is higher than it’s ever been, and politicians need to find a way to challenge this. Conference isn’t it.
Tom Lyttelton, Intern (thomas@linstockcommunications.com)
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