I don’t know whether it was the stark lighting in the ballroom of the Winter Gardens at Blackpool or the giant backdrop of green trees and blue sky, but when George Osborne strode out onto the stage soon after mid-day, he looked perfectly plausible as a Chancellor-in-waiting. He seemed taller, a bit heavier, his voice fuller, more authoritative. What’s more, he had some real red meat for an audience desperate for some solid fare.
When he told the Conference he was going to exempt houses worth up to £1 million from inheritance tax, there was a sudden current of excitement in the hall. A well-dressed lady, possibly from Kensington and Chelsea, sitting near me groaned: “a million isn’t nearly enough!” She probably hoped, as others did, that Osborne would promise to abolish IHT altogether. But for most people Osborne’s pledge on death duty, coupled with a promise to remove stamp-duty for first-time buyers of houses costing less than £250,000, pressed all the right buttons.
Will the Osborne bounce and the anticipated Cameron bounce tomorrow be enough to counter the Brown bounce? Certainly, here in Blackpool, election fever is in the air. I had a drink with David Heathcoat Amory, long-serving MP for Wells. “Wells is ready” he told me. “The posters are printed!”
Heathcoat Amory believed that foot-and-mouth could throw a spanner in the works. “You can hardly hold an election with the country in lock-down mode.”
For the afternoon social policy debate, I found myself sitting next to Orlando Fraser. As the delegates gathered, he surprised me and others nearby by shouting “Cameron, Cameron!” and gesticulating vigorously. Orlando has never been backward about coming forward but it turned out on this occasion he was trying to attract the attention of a gentleman called Cameron Watts, a stalwart of Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice.
Orlando has been chairing one of the policy panels. Many of us hope that, after having fought a brilliant, though ultimately unsuccessful, fight to regain North Devon from the Liberal Democrats, Orlando will soon return to the fray. If Boris becomes Mayor of London on May 1 next year, perhaps Orlando could have a shot at Henley?
Talking of Boris, I have to admit to my shame that I missed his apparently well-received speech to the Conference. Multi-tasking, I was in Paris where Leo, one of Boris’ brothers, was celebrating his 40th birthday. But I caught up with my eldest son at a fringe meeting, where he was his usual exuberant self.
“I want a greener London” he proclaimed to a packed auditorium, “a London where more trees are being planted than cut down and I want us all to have the confidence to cycle!”
Sir Roger (Dr.)Bannister (who in his seventies probably still runs faster than most of us can cycle) recently pointed out to me that one of the advantages of cycling is that it restricts the flow of blood to the testicles, thus reducing fertility. Given the degree of “people-congestion” in London, this seems another excellent reason to promote the bicycle. I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to mention this to Boris in Blackpool.
Blackpool itself is fairly bicycle-free. It has those famous trams, gliding along the promenade.Even trams have a carbon footprint, of course. Walking back to my hotel at the end of a long day, I ran into an old friend, Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth. It was a wonderful balmy evening, with the sun setting splendidly over the Irish Sea. Tony nodded approvingly at the cluster of giant wind-turbines, rising out of the water on the horizon. “They turn to face the wind” Tony explained, “just as sunflowers turn to face the sun”.
Will the great British public, I wonder, turn their heads once again to the Conservative Party at the end of this Conference week? We must live in hope.
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