Diary – 6 October 2007

Thank the Lord this will be the last time conference-goers have to endure the hellhole that calls itself Blackpool. The last time I stayed in a Blackpool hotel at a party conference was in the mid-1990s. I woke up at 2 a.m. on the first night covered in sweat. I hadn’t been indulging in any, er, nefarious activity and didn’t feel ill, but I eventually worked it out. The caring Blackpool hotel owner had thoughtfully put rubber incontinence sheets on the bed. Now I am sure some people would pay good money for that sort of thing, but I decided to check out the next morning. Each time I have gone to Blackpool since then I’ve stayed in the gloriously named Ribby Hall Holiday Village, a sort of modern-day Butlins without the red coats, located a few miles outside the town that even the locals dub Chav City. As a conference centre, the Winter Gardens remains stuck in the 1950s. As a blogger, an internet connection is a must for me at any conference venue. I rang the Winter Gardens to ask if they had wifi. I really don’t know why I bothered. I might as well have been asking for the availability of a nuclear physics lab. For the next few years the Tories are off to Birmingham and Manchester. I long for the day when Cardiff has enough hotel rooms to attract a conference of this size. It’s one of the most vibrant cities in Britain.

Life as a blogger at a party conference can be weird. My blog has about 50,000 readers (nearly as many as The Spectator!) and all of them seemed to be in Blackpool. People find it odd when I say I’m actually quite shy, so I don’t always find it easy to react to people who tell me how wonderful they think my blog is.