This year a group of members from Havant Conservative Association attended the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham. 

Please see below a report of the conference from our chairman:

Dear Members,

I thought you might like to hear about the recent party conference - attended by 9 members of our association. It started off for most of us with a lunch hosted by Alan Mak, which sent us off in a relaxed frame of mind to enjoy what followed.

Contrary to what you may have read in the press there was a good positive and confident feeling around the event. The Prime Minister exuded confidence in her two set piece speeches, a considerable achievement given what she has gone through, although there was a strong flavour of opposition to her Chequers proposals in the well-attended fringe events and I have no doubt that was holding many people back from being as loyal as they instinctively wanted to be.

The set piece speeches by ministers in the main hall were comparatively flat and not all well attended. Exceptions to this were Michael Gove and Ruth Davidson, maybe showing that set speeches can work if done well. The party understands that the format needs to change and has tried to involve members more, but those few who spoke were carefully selected in advance and their speeches probably edited. A far cry from calling people who caught the chairman’s eye and letting them say what they wanted. Time for the members to take back control of their conference maybe?

In contrast the fringe events were vibrant, stimulating and full of ideas. Any journalist attending would have realised that, far from the party being lost and clueless as some have reported, there are many activists and think tanks who know exactly what needs to be done. As usual at recent conferences there was a lot of frustration that ministers were fiddling around instead of being bold – though we activists always feel that, maybe as we aren’t constrained by the narrow-minded, interventionist and old-fashioned thinking of the Treasury (sorry, personal prejudice creeping in there).

Two recent members who hadn’t been to conference before both so much enjoyed it that they are intending to go for the full 4 days next year. What better advertisement than that could there be? If you aren’t a policy wonk you can always play ‘spot the minister’ or just enjoy chatting with someone like Jacob Rees Mogg in a food queue (and I can report he is as well-mannered and relaxed as he appears in the media).

The three overriding sentiments of activists at the conference seemed to me to be:

1. We are making a Horlicks of Brexit.
2. We need some bold initiatives to sort out the other problems like housing, state dependency, infrastructure and a proper Conservative economy.
3. We must not have a general election until we have made some progress on 2 above – or a leadership election until after Brexit is achieved.