I’m a party conference-pooper

aS THE Tories pack up conference for another year, one pressing political question remains unanswered. What’s the point? Of conferences, I mean. let’s face it, no good ever comes of squashing most of Westminster into an area barely the size of a football pitch, inviting in the Press — and then injecting the whole sweaty mess with gallons of warm white wine and indigestible canapes. I speak as someone who has attended a fair few party conferences in her day.

But lately I’ve stopped going. and it’s not because I don’t want to be supportive. It’s more because I value my sanity too much to get caught up in something that frankly serves almost no useful purpose other than to provide a platform for chancers, lunatics and egomaniacs. and yet, year after year, back they all go. It’s like some sort of primordial political mating ritual, stitched into the DNa of the party faithful.

But what no one seems to quite realise is that the time has come to evolve.

The next general election will be won or lost on the online battlefield. Not in the foyer of the Hyatt Regency in Birmingham.