News

HOWARD'S WAY.... a weekly column from Michael Howard MP

5 October 2006

 

By the time you read this the Party Conference season will be well and truly over. And not before time, I can imagine many of you saying. Does this annual seaside routine (though Labour, breaking the mould, were at Manchester this year) really contribute anything to the greater good? Is it really necessary? 

This year I can attempt to answer these questions with a little more detachment than I might previously have been able to muster. It is the first time for 5 years that I have not made a speech at the Conservative Conference. And before that, apart from a 2 year break after I had retired from William Hague’s Shadow Cabinet, I had spoken at every Conference for more than a decade. 

In my view these conferences serve a purpose. Political parties have an essential role to play in any parliamentary democracy. And Party Conferences have an essential role in creating and reinforcing the dynamic of the Parties. 

Of course there is usually more than one agenda. What the politicians say from the platform often bears little relation to what the delegates or representatives are saying at the bars. And often the media have their own agenda, different again. As long as they can find one or two Party members to play into it they can run it regardless of the views of the majority of people present. 

So the first rule for outside observers of the Conferences (all of them) is don’t believe all you read in the newspapers or are told on television. 

But every now and again something happens which does light up a half-concealed truth or illuminate a state of affairs the parties themselves would prefer to stay hidden. 

There can be few better examples of this than Cherie Blair’s remarks of Gordon Brown at this year’s Labour Party Conference – “That’s a lie.” 

The Labour Party’s suggestion that what she’d really said was “Can I get by?” was hilarious. Even more so was one suggestion in the newspapers that she might have said “Hi-de-Hi”! I had hoped this might become a new catch-phrase but it doesn’t seem to have caught on yet. 

Whatever your view of the Conferences there is one certain consolation for you this week. You will be spared them for another year. Make the most of it!