I’m writing this from the Conservative party conference in Manchester and I must say it’s nice to be among friends. I mean the drunken hacks at the bar, obviously. This is a conference where we can drink with impunity because, let’s face it, there isn’t much for us to write about. The big story at all the party conferences is ‘splits’ and the reason both this conference and the Lib Dem conference have been so dull is because the split is between the two parties, not within them. This is one of the ancillary benefits of the coalition: the poles around which the government’s internal politics revolve are located in a safe place, quite unlike the previous administration.
Nearly all the Conservative party’s senior politicians have been effusive in their praise of the Liberal Democrats this week and that should be taken with a grain of salt. For one thing, it’s self-interested. Lib Dem defectors are twice as likely to vote Labour as they are Conservative, so persuading them to return to the Lib Dem fold will benefit the Tories. It also makes the politicians in question look mature and magnanimous, totally unthreatened by their coalition partners. It’s the language of dominance.
But David Cameron’s affection for the coalition is at least partly genuine. It’s a huge comfort to know that his main rivals in the Cabinet are members of another party rather than this own. The fact that Chris Huhne is an insufferable prig who thinks he’s the smartest person in the room would be ten times more irritating if he was a card-carrying Tory, not least because Cameron would have to conceal his dislike for the sake of party unity. Contrast this with poor Tony Blair, having to contend with Gordon Brown sitting opposite him for ten years, face like thunder.
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