Fun by the Sea

Written by Neil Bradbury on Tue 27th Sep 2005

It's conference season again and the parties are having their week by the sea. As someone who goes to the Lib Dem conference it's interesting to watch the other conferences. This years Lib Dem conference was the most professional yet, with high levels of security and more consciousness of the media than ever. But it didn't stop conference voting against certain parts of the party hierarchies' motions on policy and it didn't stop a delegate being allowed to question Charles Kennedy's leadership skills in a question and answer session with Charles in the main conference hall. When delegates at Lib Dem conferences vote for motions it becomes policy. Simple as that.

Contrast that with the other two main parties' conferences. The Tories conference is due to start and at least they have never pretended its anything more important than a glorified rally with little powers. This year's conference will be notable for the beauty parade of different leadership candidates setting out their stall.

Labours conference is now over and to my eyes it's the most odd of the three. Motions are voted on by a complicated electoral college where the unions still have large block votes. It's so complicated that when votes happen it takes a while to decide what the result is. Ministers then say that when votes go against them that it doesn't matter because the unions are just using their block votes to push things through and there fore the vote lacks credibility. But that's their system so if they don't like it, why don't they change it? Because the only thing the Labour party would like less would be if their own members had all the votes. It's no wonder that people are disillusioned with the Tories and Labour when they know that even if they joined the parties they would have no real chance of influencing their parties' policies.

The great issue where debate has been suppressed at the Labour conference is the debacle in Iraq. The worrying signs of Labours authoritarianism are for all to see now that when one solitary delegate shouted "Nonsense" during Jack Straws speech when he talked about Iraq, he was bundled out of the hall and powers under the terrorism act were used. It's very worrying that this terrorism laws are being used regularly all over the country in cases involving what you or I would call lawful protest.

It's a wonder anyone turns up to the other parties' conferences at all. The one thing they do is give a tiny chance for members of the public to actually see important politicians and for them to be brought down a peg or two. And that's no bad thing.