The party conference season is a bit of a misnomer – not that there’s a shortage of parties – the bar of the main conference hotel is a right old bacchanalian romp. But for the main players – the folks making speeches it’s all serious stuff.
They know they will be performing not just for the conference audience, but a TV one too. Certainly only the political anoraks will actually be tuned in, but one slip up, one throwaway line which should have been thrown away and that clip will be on the evening news and will haunt you for ever and a day.
These are what you might call the accidental hazards faced by party leaders. Then there are the acts of deliberate sabotage like Liz Truss reprising her O grade economics mantra. “Let’s make Britain grow again”, she trilled, carefully timing her gig to upstage the actual chancellor on the main stage whilst she was at an overflowing fringe event.
You might wonder, given that Ms Truss is the only PM to have been outlasted in office by a supermarket lettuce, why she dared show her face again to the faithful. She is not, however, a woman much given to shame.
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It didn’t much help Mr Sunak either that two of the party stalwarts popping up in favour of HS2 making it to Manchester were the Conservative mayor for the West Midlands, and the former Tory chancellor George Osborne.
Such are the elephant traps laid for party leaders as Sir Keir will doubtless find out in Liverpool next week.
And then there is the SNP’s bunfight still to come in Aberdeen where the main motion and no fewer than seven amendments will require to be squeezed into a 100 minute slot. Something tells me the lieges will not be happy.
Having covered conferences of all stripes I can exclusively reveal it is not recommended to phone your other half at 2 in the morning to reassure him that you are safely back in your own bed in your own hotel.
Especially not having spent the previous five hours in the aforementioned bar.
Research, we call it in the trade.
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