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William Hague 1977
Well it's all over. The party political conference season, or conference as it's now called, has finished. A while back Richard North declared his disinterest in it all. However, you might have thought, if you think in trendy sound bites, that the first coalition in a long time would have heralded a new era in UK politics. That this would lead to post adversarial politics and onwards and upwards to the permanently sunny uplands. In a word, no. This is not the case. The death of adversarial politics has been exaggerated. The 'new era' is simply confirmation that conventional domestic politics has been overcome by the confederation effect, the EU. Our national politicians have nothing to do but fight amongst themselves. An in-party adversarial trend that delights the MSM as, without this they would have nothing to do, nothing to report.

In some respects only a few people could have spotted the difference between the three tribes of nerds that took part in this now very dated ritual. Also all three parties were very lucky in the timing of their efforts to impress us. The first to go were the Liberal Democrats. Held in Birmingham their bash was hard for locals to spot. No extra traffic in the streets nor anything exciting occurred, in or out of the venue.