13 Sep 2017

Party Games - The five key words for the five main parties during the 2017 conference season

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This weekend sees the start of a better part of a month’s worth of party conference season. As a result, the House of Commons, which only returned to business last Tuesday, will be placed in suspension again until 9 October. This ‘season’ is an unusually British affair: other countries either have their meetings with less frequency or hold them over a weekend rather than oblige delegates to take time off work or force the national legislature to shut down. Never mind. Over the course of three plus weeks we will witness five parties assembling together for what might be described as a combination of Davos without billionaires and Freshers’ Week without students.

The unexpected element of the 2017 conferences compared with what might have been anticipated either this time last year or even as late as Easter 2017 is, of course, the fact that there has been a general election and an unanticipated outcome to it. The nature of that result also means that there is a widespread assumption among the political elite and humble commentators (including me) that there will either be another election after the UK exit from the EU (2019) or not until after the end of the ‘implementation period’ (May speak) or ‘transition’ (more or less everyone else speak) in 2022. Alas, like everything else in recent times, this (eminently reasonable) calculation will probably turn out to be wrong, but for now it is the currency of the realm and influencing strategies everywhere.

What then are the key themes or words for the five conferences of note (apologies to the Greens, Plaid Cymru and various others disregarded here) in the order that these events will be occurring?

Liberal Democrats: Identity

The Liberal Democrats kick off matters this weekend in Bournemouth under a new leader (Sir Vince Cable) who has finally made it to his position at the age of 74. Yet as ‘old’ seems to be the new ‘new’ in politics and as he is a rather savvy chap, Sir Vince should not be underestimated.

He will be aware that the Lib Dems are still suffering from the aftermath of their coalition experience with the Conservatives, which robbed them both of their status as the natural ‘protest vote’ party in British politics but also, and in many ways more seriously, drained them of their identity. For the past seven years it has been very hard to find a single word, sentence, phrase, policy or theme that summarises what the party stands for. If that is still true come an election in 2019 or 2022 then there is little reason why the number of Liberal Democrat MPs will rise dramatically from the current tally of 12.

The task for Sir Vince is to start to shape a new identity. The big decision he has to make is whether or not to bet everything on (a) Brexit proving to be extremely difficult to implement and thus make the USP of his party that it alone favours a second referendum on the final terms of any deal before withdrawal from the EU occurs, or (b) whether he regards that as too narrow a platform and looks for some alternative domestic issue with more ‘bread and butter’ appeal. He looks poised to travel in an ‘anti-Brexit or bust’ direction which may prove the right call for him.

Labour: Control

The Labour Party conference in Brighton will be an odd affair as the party assembles to celebrate, er, not winning an election. For Mr Corbyn and his supporters, nonetheless, confounding expectations by increasing the number of Labour MPs and securing almost 40% of the popular vote is enough of a moral victory. The Corbynistas (signed up to the consensus that the next election will either be in 2019 or 2022 like the rest of us are) must thus operate on the notion that they need to complete their rewrite of the Labour rulebook over the next two conferences to ensure that they can hold on to power within the party in case matters do not proceed as planned in any election in 2019.

They will make the first moves this time when they finally seize full control over the National Executive Committee before moving on to 2018 in Liverpool, by which point they will have recast not only the election of a future leader but reset the process by which Labour MPs are re-selected and moved command over the manifesto to a ballot of all members, with MPs utterly marginalised. In short, in a strange take on the film Back to the Future, the whole 1980s Bennite agenda will finally be realised.

UKIP: Extinction

The short interlude between the Labour and Conservative assemblies will be filled, for about 36 hours, by UKIP. The good news is that UKIP have moved on from holding their conference at the Doncaster Racecourse. The perhaps less good news is that they have decided to schedule their conference in Torquay, a place notorious for being somewhere that people go to die. As UKIP is in the midst of another leadership election involving people with zero name recognition, the only serious issue at this conference is whether the party will have enough life in it to hold another.

Conservatives: Endorsement

The Conservative Party conference in Manchester is about one thing and one thing only. Whether or not Theresa May comes out of it with a strong enough sense of endorsement, and with it forgiveness, from the party faithful to deter discontented MPs from conducting a coup against her this side of the Christmas recess.

To attempt to avert that fate, it can be expected that the Prime Minister will both throw herself on the mercy of activists, work the occasion like fury, reveal part of her hand for the next stage in the Brexit negotiations, outline various other eye-catching initiatives in home policies and pledge a fundamental overhaul of the Conservative Party machine so that it is better equipped to fight future election campaigns. The pretenders to her throne will all behave themselves perfectly while allowing their associates to scout the terrain to see whether there is any support for rebellion.

In other words, these will be the most important three days of the year since the election. They may prove to be the three most consequential in the whole Parliament. It is all about endorsement. How strong will it be? Under what conditions? With what duration? To what extent will the UK stance on Brexit be changed in order to achieve an acceptably high level of harmony inside the Conservatives? It will be a moment of high drama with disproportionately high significance for what will come after.

SNP: Renewal

In a peculiar way, the SNP conference, which comes last in Glasgow, is the hardest one of the lot to anticipate. The party and its leader, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, are at a severe crossroads. The party has been in government in the Edinburgh Parliament for a decade now and as a consequence has become ‘the establishment’. It lost its overall majority there in 2016, has a fairly disappointing set of council results in May and a far worse setback still in the June general election. The party had hardened its enthusiasm for a second independence referendum much earlier this year in the light of polls which encouraged this shift, only for the public mood north of the border to shift sharply and for Ruth Davidson to prove a far more spiky opponent than any of the multiple Labour leaders. So, Ms Sturgeon finds herself needing to keep party morale intact by pledging that independence is still a realistic ambition while convincing sceptical voters that she and her ilk are not fixated on the issue.

That may prove to be an extremely difficult balancing act to achieve. Like Sir Vince and the Liberal Democrats at the first conference of the season, she needs Brexit to come to be seen as a disaster.

Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA


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