Status Anxiety: Nothing to write about

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.