Glass of wine in hand and tieless, David Cameron moved across a room full of hacks at the Hyatt hotel in Birmingham with the smoothness of a ballroom dancer. His wingman was his chum-cum-Chief Whip, Michael Gove; the former Times scribbler was the sole minister invited to the conference soirée. Cameron let slip that his “utterly heartbroken” speech in Aberdeen in the nervy days before Scotland’s referendum had been vetted by Gordon Brown. That the Tory premier bowed to his Labour predecessor reinforces the impression that, for ten days in September, old Irn-Broon was running the country.
The ConDems are disintegrating as coalition rivals battle for votes. In Taunton Deane, Jeremy Browne, the Lib Dems’ answer to Leslie Phillips (see page 23), defends a majority of 4,000 against the PR Rebecca Pow, a Tory wannabe granted a podium speaking spot at the Con conference. My mole recalled Browne’s private assessment of Pow. “I don’t feel particularly threatened,” said the Limp Dem, “but I imagine she organises a very good garden party.” Talk about damning with faint praise.
The Beast of Bolsover, Dennis Skinner, skipped his last meeting of Labour’s National Executive Committee to avoid being patronised by Ed Miliband. The veteran lost his committee seat as collateral damage in what looked like an inept plot by the leader’s office to oust the Scouse critic Steve Rotheram. Miliband praising his unintentional victim would have tested the patience of a beast with a hatred of hypocrisy.
The Tories want a cull of cuddly animal toys and tales of Mr Tod. Brian Williams, a Shropshire councillor, warned a Countryside Alliance gathering that fluffy squirrels and the like were turning kids against badger shooting and fox hunting. And there I was, thinking it was because sending hounds to tear animals apart for fun is repellent and scientific evidence doesn’t support blasting badgers.
Hope Not Hate’s Nick Lowles joins the honourable order of high achievers who’ve rejected a gong. The head of the anti-extremist group, I understand, declined a peerage offered by Miliband. Unsurprisingly, I found no mention of this refusal in Hope, the modest Lowles’s book about the campaign that defeated the BNP.
In the Manchester boozer Briton’s Protection, a pub serving fine ales and 300 whiskies, a young Labour researcher ordered a cup of Earl Grey. The landlady had to pop out to buy a box.
In Birmingham, the boxes of Sunday Telegraphs placed all over conference weren’t so clever when the headline screamed “Tory crisis” after Brooks Newmark quit and Mark Reckless defected.
Kevin Maguire is the associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
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