I’m speaking tomorrow, Thursday, at a lunchtime lecture at the RSA with the timely title, Party conferences – who needs them?, alongside Stephen Pound MP, Iain Dale and Michael White. Here’s the blurb:
The annual party conferences attract hordes of the party faithful and mark the start of the political calendar for the Whitehall establishment. The news teams and cameras will be there poised to cover events. But what impact do the party conferences really have in Britain, or indeed the wider world?
Policy is no longer made here – arguably the party conference has become a triumph of stage management over substance. The media seem less interested in policy issues than in political intrigue and catching politicians ‘letting their hair down’. And the whole ‘carnival of the politicos’ tends to pass the wider world by. So why in the 21st century do our political parties still decamp to the seaside come autumn?
Can we foresee a time when the party conferences will die out? And if the conferences don’t make any discernible impact on our country’s democracy, what should take their place?
To those who were in Bournemouth this week – and, indeed, to those who weren’t – can I ask three questions:
1) what do you hope to get out of attending a Lib Dem conference?
2) what do you think is the most important role of the Lib Dem conference?
3) how do you think the Lib Dem party conference will change in the years ahead?
The event, which starts at 1pm, will be audio-broadcast live on the RSA website, and you can follow discussion on Twitter at #rsapartyconf.
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7 Comments
But… policy is made at our conference. So it really doesn’t make much of a case for us, does it?
The other conferences, well, they could probably be called conventions with more accuracy; but by convention they are not… just for networking, party unity and media schmoozing its perfectly worthwhile- and profitable.
Who wrote the blurb? Do they know what Conference is?
You cant make policy in front of the cameras – this week has underlined that, every cough, every twist and turn, is opened up under bright lights, certainly the two major “initiatives” would have been better thrashed out in a committee structure, first, surely….there has been a lot of negative publicity this week, which those in the bubble of the conference might not be fully aware of, someone else on the Voice made the point that you dont get to see Jon Snow at Channel Four, or, Newsnight, let alone the mass-circulation dailies….
The other parties recognised this some time ago and treat annual conferences as a promotion jamboree…if the opinion poll standing shows the Liberal Democrats going down or, just carrying on flat-lining, then, you can ask yourself what positive benefit has it been, other than being a good cash-cow for party funds.
What the LibDem Conferences do is help the leadership relate to the rest of the Party, and the rest of the party to the leadership. I think that the Tory jamborees sometimes do alot of the second (remeber Cameron’s great conference speech), but are more about calming down the apoplexy of some of the rest of the party than about relating to them. Labour Conferences seem to be about letting the dissidents blow off just enough steam to hold the party together; and recently also about defusing intra-party tensions.
All three have been also about getting a media boost. Thsi time the LibDems seem to have low played that in favour of getting in tune with one another. That may play well in the lead up to the election.
The conference seem to have done what it should do – there’s been a healthy dialogue between membership and leadership. Leadership quite rightly has to put the point that there are cost elements, it has to put the membership’s wish-list together in a way that works financially. Leadership can also propose some interesting ideas to see what the membership thinks. Membership can give a good idea of the priority order of policies which it would be happiest campaigning for (and also what to stick with and what to drop in coalition negotiations should they happen). Membership can also push interesting ideas upwards.
This is active democracy, and if the media prefer the idea of five-year plans put forward at rallies by Lenin-style party leaders, well, isn’t the idea that politics should be like that a little bit why it’s so despised right now?
Nick needs to get a little less uptight about this, and stop falling into the role the media want to push on him where being a leader means slapping down those you lead and forcing them to conform. The LibDems aren’t like Labour in 1983, mainly because we don’t have millions of people who vote for us because “we always do” meaning the activists can go off and play silly buggers. Our activists tend to have developed on a “survival of the fittest” principle – where they’ve been silly buggers and ignored what works, the party has died out, where they’ve got it right, the party has done well, so that’s who makes up the party’s active members – people who’ve got it right working on the ground.
So if both sides listen to each other, don’t treat it as a battle, come to a decent agreement, that’s great and it will work to give a party people will want to vote for, has decent policies and people on the ground keen to work it and win votes. Media commentators don’t understand this, but never mind, it’s best to remember most people don’t read the posh papers, the other papers give us so little coverage they aren’t worth worrying about, we’re only a few seconds on the telly news, but if we’ve got the enthusiastic people on the ground sticking the stuff through the letterbox and Labour haven’t because they’ve pissed off their entire membership and the Tories are … well have you seen their members … we can do a lot. We’ve always worked this way. It’s even quite fun.
For Liberal Democrats, surely the most important function Conference serves is as a meeting of the sovereign body of the party. Every six months, policy is decided. Between those two points, we have daily announcements, positions, statements responding to a constantly changing news agenda and situation in politics, and I’m sure the leadership take into account steering from Conference’s expressed views on other, or similar issues when deciding what to say about any given topic. But however good their reading of that steering was, until Conference passes it, it’s not party policy. That the other “parties” don’t trust their membership with this simply demonstrates that they are not truly parties, but merely fan clubs, temporary alliances whose only goal in common is power.
For people like myself, non-voting delegates, it also functions very well as a place to exchange views, get trained in new skills, find interesting debates (more easy at the fringes than in the hall, to be honest), meet new people, network, and generally remind yourself how many people outside your little area are fighting for the same thing.
“Party conferences – who needs them?” Anyone who believes in a thriving, vibrant party that does more than merely applaud a salesman.
As a local Cllr. it I owe a duty of care to our local residents both to listen and understand their issues and to also report to them and campaign on what the L/D policies are after considered and weighted democratic debate at Conference.
It is important for residents,supporters and the new voters that we will to win over, to understand that the vast majority of Conference reps. are ordinary volunteers,Focus Deliverers and many more now are business backers from the City and industry, who want to see Real Change under Nick Clegg.
The most important gain from Conference is the venting of the same political spleen as the assembled 3000 local community `activists’ and Cllrs.and MP`s and MEP`s etc.who all have special talents,gifts,vision and human integrity to choose the Liberal Democrats as their life crusade in politics.And all Voting Reps.have an individual vote on all policy decisions.
The Liberal Democrat Conference Reps.share the same hunger to empower our local communities with a new `Localism’ to have a much larger say in bigger local and smaller national government than will happen under the others who shy at public consultation,resident surveys and devolved budgets to run local services.
The most important role of the Conference is to allow Reps. to talk to one another, debate and pass new agreed Policy that will bring about change in communities in fair taxes,fair votes and individual liberty.
Policy on housing choices for the waiting homeless,education pupil premium investment for the third of teenagers who still fail to gain 5 decent GCSE`s,the one million forgotten young unemployed,the abandoned patriotic Gurkhas until Nick Clegg intervened in their rights to become UK citizens and the rights of young people and the unborn, to inherit a safer more trusting world that respects the relentless natural power of `Climate Change’ and the need to build a sustainable economy.
In the future Conference ought to be held in the large L/D controlled Cities including Sheffield,Bristol,Newcastle,Edinburgh and Liverpool and should be populated by greater swathes of young representatives from Liberal Youth and more incentives for all Members to be motivated to attend for the first time.