How I Became a Party Animal ; a Dodgy Joke From Dd...A Late-Night History Lesson From Cuddly Ken, and - Pass the Sm Salts - That Gorgeous David Cameron. You've Never Read a Tory Conference Dispatch Like This One
Summary
ON A drizzly autumn afternoon, I pop into the bathroom in the Winter Gardens conference centre, Blackpool. On the wall is a notice promoting the symposium 'Tackling Ports and Infrastructure Congestion: Buffet Available.' I am not having a public services themed nightmare; I am not on one of the weirder ports of call in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy; I am not in prison for the crime of bad writing. I - a normal London gal, a voter so floating I take a lilo into the polling booth at General Election time - am at the Conservative Party Conference.
The Conference is hot this year. It's so hot it's steaming. The great party of Churchill, Disraeli and Andrew Bonar Law (PM from 1922-23; stay awake at the back!) is in the throes of its third contested leadership election since John Major hung up his underpants in 1997 - and this time they are desperate.See the full content of this document
Extract
How I Became a Party Animal ; a Dodgy Joke From Dd...A Late-Night History Lesson From Cuddly Ken, and - Pass the Sm Salts - That Gorgeous David Cameron. You've Never Read a Tory Conference Dispatch Like This One
Who will wipe the grin off Blair's face for ever? Who will hurl Tessa Jowell against the nearest wall? Throw another egg at the tosspot-despot-John-Prescott? As I wander the Winter Gardens watching women with cauliflower hair and pinstriped men drinking tea and muttering 'Labour Tax-and-Spend!' with real malice, I feel like I have wandered into a Spitting Image sketch.
I see Michael Heseltine, old but unbowed; William Hague, Ann Widdecombe - blonde like Shirley Temple with a brain - John Redwood looking like only John Redwood can, and Boris Johnson, his golden hair a beacon in the gloom. What does he make of this?'The Conservative Party Conference,' Boris tells me, 'is an act of collective ritual bonding. It is like a mixture between a...See the full content of this document