thetorydiary

It was confirmed today that the Conservative Party conference in 2012 will take place in Birmingham.

Eric Pickles trumpeted the announcement, saying:

"We're delighted to be returning to Birmingham for our autumn conference in 2012. Birmingham proved to us in 2008 that it has an exceptional conference venue in the ICC and Symphony Hall, a good range of accommodation and a well developed transport infrastructure.  Whilst these are all important issues for our delegates it was the welcome we received that made a lasting impression.  Birmingham clearly goes the extra mile to look after its visitors and we are looking forward to being there both later this year and in 2012."

From 1993 to 2007 the party alternated between Blackpool and Bournemouth as the venue for the main party conference, but a new pattern appears to be emerging where we alternate between Birmingham and Manchester (the venue for the 2009 and 2011 conferences).

The conference centres in both those cities are impressive, and I have no criticism of them; but there is a part of me which rather yearns for some sea air and a walk along the prom by way of re-invigoration during the week...

On a more practical note, when the party moved towards the urban conferences in 2008 there was concern among some activists that accommodation in the cities was far pricier than in seaside resorts, thereby making it more expensive, perhaps prohibitively so, for some.

I enjoyed returning to Brighton (pictured above) for the spring conference and did wonder whether it might be in the running to host an autumn conference again some time soon (it last did so in 1992).  It has hosted many Labour conferences over the last decade, so there is no concern about it not being able to deal with the capacity and it has a suitably broad range of accommodation and restaurants to suit all price tags.

What do you think?

Jonathan Isaby

Update: Scroll down for the now published agenda!

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This time next week the Conservative spring conference in Brighton will be over. Yet as of today, party members heading for the south coast for the weekend still have no idea as to what is on the agenda - apart from the keynote address by David Cameron on the Sunday afternoon.

All we know is the timings of the sessions, as reproduced on the right (click to enlarge). There is no reference to the topics under discussion or which shadow cabinet members are making speeches.

When I first queried this with the powers-that-be at CCHQ last week I was told that the agenda was due to be published on Thursday afternoon, but nothing has materialised.

Obviously I accept that when the conference was being put together we were unsure as to whether a general election campaign might already be under way, so there was always going to be a need for some flexibility; but it would be good to know what's on the agenda with only days to go before the event.

In the mean time, there are of course some fringe events that you can put in your conference diary:

• On Saturday at 12.30pm in the Library at the Hilton Metropole, Tim Montgomerie will be chairing a meeting at which James Bethell of Nothing British will speak about "Challenging the modern BNP". Click here for more details.
• And on Saturday evening between 10pm and midnight, ConservativeHome is hosting an Election Countdown Party, supported by the European Azerbaijan Society, at which Ken Clarke is guest of honour and there will be live jazz and flowing wine. Click here for venue details and how to RSVP.

2pm update: Half an hour after posting the above, I was emailed the conference agenda. Here it is:

Chairing a fringe meeting at Party Conference earlier in the week I was struck by the amount of agreement that was greeting a left-wing NGO's views on poverty. There were a handful of dissenters but only a handful. The explanation became clear when I asked for questions. Question after question came from other NGOs, charities and quasi government bodies. I actually recognised a good number of the questioners from the previous week's Labour Party Conference.

The next day I learnt from Dan Hannan's blog that only 4,000 of the 12,000 people registered for the Conference were party members. Later I was told that the number of Tory members was closer to 4,500.  The number of journalists equalled about 2,000. That leaves a lot of lobbyists, charities and so on. The fees from these non-party registrants contributed to a reported £1.5m profit from the Conference. Quite a handy sum and, of course, very welcome.

There are a number of reasons why the number of party members going to Party Conference remains relatively low:

• The move away from seaside resorts to Birmingham and Manchester. Birmingham and Manchester are excellent venues but they are much more expensive to stay in than a Bournemouth or Blackpool B&B.  In our pre-Conference poll, by 44% to 34% members agreed that "It is now much too expensive to attend Party Conference since the move away from the seaside towns of Blackpool and Bournemouth and to the major cities of Birmingham and Manchester."
  
• The move back to a fully weekday programme. This Conference was a Monday to Thursday affair; making it harder for working people.
• The dull programme on the main stage. Nick Robinson wrote about this problem yesterday.
• The fringe programme has also become duller. Corporate sponsorship of events is now the norm but it seems to encourage safer topics from those sponsored. The Freedom Zone - run by the gentlemen of gentlemen, Simon Richards - served for the second year running as the fringe of thefringe. I might even suggest The True Fringe. You must organise it again next year Simon. Please!

We all need to put our thinking heads on as to how we can reverse these trends.

Tim Montgomerie

Tuesday 6th October:

• Bringing forward the raising of the pension age (Guardian and ToryDiary)
• All the other announcements in George Osborne's speech - incuding the public sector pay freeze for 2011 - are identified here
• Halting the funding of new speed cameras and the rolling out of average speed checks (Daily Mail)
• Villages to be granted powers to expand by up to 10% over ten years and local communities to be rewarded for building homes by receiving match funding of the council tax revenue from the new homes for 6 years (Planning Resource and Grant Shapps' speech)
• Shadow Business Secretary Ken Clarke announced that a Conservative Government would ·       introduce a powerful new ‘star chamber’, which he would chair, with the remit of enforcing a stringent ‘one in – one out’ requirement where any new law must include cuts in old laws which, together, produce a net 5% reduction in the regulatory burden; he also said there would be a scheme to allow the public to nominate unpopular regulations to be reviewed by Parliament; and that all regulators and regulatory quangos would be subject to sunset clauses, being re-assessed and their duties reviewed Read Ken Clarke's speech).

Monday 5th October:

• Patients to be able to pick surgeon from league table (Telegraph)
• Voters to get chance to alter parliamentary bills (Guardian)
• Michael Gove pledges new generation of technical schools (Standard)
• Conservatives propose giving more power to Parliament over its business and establishing public consultation on legislation
• Osborne announces plans for 60,000 new jobs under Tory Government (Herald)

Sunday 4th October: Details of the Work Programme are unveiled.  Hundreds of thousands of people on incapacity benefit will have their benefits cut by a third if they fail tough medical tests.  David Willetts has unveiled an "emergency plan" that will pay for 10,000 more students to go to university next year.  The plan will be funded by a New Zealand-inspired scheme for early repayment of student loans.  The Guardian has more.

Sunday 4th October: Grace and Favour residence to be opened to the public (Telegraph)

Sunday 4th October: Plans to close up to 200 failing schools (The Sunday Times).

Saturday 3rd October: Pensioners will keep their home and get free residential care if they pay £8,000 insurance fee under Tory plans

> Last year's policy announcements at the Birmingham Party Conference

All the big Cameron themes are there with major sessions devoted to the NHS, 'greening the economy', and fixing the broken society. There are also the more traditional Conservative themes including a hour dedicated to the Union between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

In addition to David Cameron's big speech, on the Thursday, the hinge of the Conference will be 11.15am on Tuesday when George Osborne addresses the issue of the economy.

The Conference will be opened by Eric Pickles and Boris Johnson.  David Cameron will close it. 

Here is a PDF.

Click here for a guide to ConservativeHome on the fringe.

Click here for previous posts.