The SDP annual conference is taking place in Manchester on 8th October. Should you go? (Spoiler alert - of course you should.)
For the major parties, conference seems an ever-less quaint ritual, the moment when these coalitions are persuaded to pretend that they enjoy degree of democratic ownership which will be ignored if not traduced the moment the leaders escape the hall. To pretend they are actual political parties, not merely electoral platforms.
The Conservative conference doesn’t work too hard at that pretence. The conference exists for the leaders to be acclaimed by the faithful. Those leaders don’t expect to be listening to advice or accepting petitions from the floor. Quite why the faithful congregate in this way remains a mystery. But then again, there is mystery at the heart of many public rituals. Prevailing mood: anxiety.
Ever since the Labour Party got the heavies to throw out an 86-year old anti-war protestor from conference, it has aspired to a similar ‘acclamation not consultation’ function. But there’s a history there, and there’s always a chance the attendees might turn feral. Conference might excoriate the leaders, might angrily daub the party in the most repellently deep red hues, might quite possibly enjoy tearing itself apart in public. Yes, there’s still blood-sport potential at the Labour conference. Prevailing mood: paranoia.
I don’t know why the LibDems gather. A chance to raise a toast to Queen Ursula over the water? A chance to announce or adjust their personal pronouns? Prevailing mood: smug.
Quite apart from the irrelevance of the script being acted out, conference season performs two other functions. First, they almost guarantee politicians more dedicated media coverage than they could otherwise expect. Is this a good thing? From a politician’s point of view, yes, yes, yes. Up to the moment Liz Truss became prime minister, her chief visibility to the British public was her strange conference tirade against cheese imports. ‘That is a disgrace’. All publicity, even that, it turns out, is good publicity.
Second, they provide a great opportunity to renew the vows made to the big financial backers who keep the show on the road. And conversely, a chance to flash some leg at potential new backers. Money, money, money.
What else would you expect from these hollowed-out, thoughtless, decrepit and corrupt parties? Parties who have long made a deep peace with the betrayal of its supporters? Parties whose capacity for close attention and imaginative thought died decades ago? What else could they aspire to?
Is this the best we can expect? Is this what our democracy has been eroded to?
We must do better, if only for ourselves.
And this is exactly why you should get off the sofa, recognize your indignation, and say to yourself ‘dammit, I will go to the SDP conference.’
Before us we get daily proof that the shared neo-liberal orthodoxies shared by both major parties have failed us, and will go on failing, even as they are given one more go. The neo-liberals of Labour and Conservative cannot even understand the root causes of our discontents, let alone spare the imaginative effort to address them. They have other fish to fry.
The SDP party has no other fish to fry. It cannot sell its soul to major financial backers, because it has none. It has to think and imagine, and stretch itself beyond the boundaries others may try to impose upon it. That is the only way it can help Britain find a renewal in a future which looks certain to be deeply challenging.
The SDP conference, then, cannot be a deadening affair: it must breathe life into the task we set ourselves. All it has is the most cogent understanding of Britain’s predicament, and an increasingly coherent set of policies with which to approach them. And you, dear reader, and you.
When you go to Manchester, you’ll find that unusual feeling, of meeting with people who have made the really important discovery early and are happy with it. ‘I was into William Clouston before he played Wembley’.
It is a gathering of happy warriors, meeting to take the next stop in our insurgent campaign. You can be one. And you’ll be joined not just by Mr Clouston, but also John Cleese, Rod Liddle, Patrick O’Flynn, just to name a few. Should you go to the SDP Conference? You should, you should.
Michael Taylor / Coldwater Economics / Coldwater Economics Substack
I’m very tempted.