The champagne ban was non-negotiable: David Cameron did not want any of his aides drinking bubbly at the Conservative party conference. Not that they needed much telling. The mood was already so sombre that some Tory staffers were decanting cans of beer under the tables of the Hyatt Hotel in Birmingham to avoid bar prices; they were later caught by the manager. What was first intended as a celebration had become a wake, mourning the prosper-ity era which the Conservatives had originally planned for. They must now prepare for an economic war.
The Pol Roger was flowing defiantly at The Spectator’s reception on Monday night, but was used mainly to treat shock. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had just suffered the sharpest fall in its history, and it became grimly apparent that nothing the Tories said really mattered any more. George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, had just seen his plan to freeze council tax for two years relegated to the inside pages.
Mr Cameron and his aides spent Monday night adjusting the tone of the conference. Rather than fire any more new policies into the same black hole that had swallowed Mr Osborne’s initiative, the conference would instead be about showing judgment and adaptability. Mr Cameron would fight Mr Brown not by denouncing him, but by giving the public a superior analysis of the economic meltdown. He would respond to Mr Brown’s factional attacks by offering bipartisan support. He would answer the ‘no time for a novice’ charge by saying that character trumps experience.
Mr Cameron had tempted fate by writing three quarters of his speech before conference started. When he arrived, he joked to his aides that Blackpool was his ‘lucky’ conference venue and that moving to Birmingham was asking for trouble.
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