by Dave Roberts

I have been attending Tory conferences for the past 10 years (in a professional capacity you understand) and have to make the shameful admission that I generally have a pretty good time. The thing about the Tory conference, is that it doesn’t pretend to be anything apart from a jolly get together where activists can spend a few days talking politics, catching up with friends and listening to their favourite MPs and leaders make barn storming speeches.

Yet this year I found the whole affair a little lack lustre. There were the normal fringe meetings where the Tory right could sound off about the EU, fishing rights, immigration, the general demise of traditional standards and the moral decline of our youth. But there was a general lack of zip in the proceedings in the main hall, bars and fringe.

Boris Johnson gave a speech that rambled along, but gave the activists something to smile about and their love affair with him continues. George Osborne gave a dull speech that hardly stirred the audience out of their torpor until he attacked workers rights. Theresa May did manage to get the audience’s attention with her now infamous tale about the rights of cats. But poor old Andrew Lansley spoke to a half empty hall on what is supposed to be the Tories great love and great reform, the NHS. (more…)