Conservative Party Conference: Where have all the Tories gone?

Conservative Party Conference: Where have all the Tories gone?

Harold Wilson once asked the question: "Where have all the Tories gone?"

His answer then, back in 1974, was: "Off to the City, every one."

The same question could be asked here at this Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham.

Where have they gone? Not the City this time.

I have been coming to Tory conferences since the mid-1980s, when Margaret Thatcher was in her pomp, and I have never seen the main hall so empty.


It was full at the start on day one, for the speeches of party chairman Brandon Lewis and the ebullient Digby Jones, who gave a rumbustious after dinner-style speech, including his "irrelevance and seriously offensive" attack on Boris Johnson.

Theresa May and her husband Philip were in the hall then, sitting a few rows back among the activists, in the way that David Cameron used to when he was leader.

But when the PM and Philip left the hall after Digby Jones' speech, so did many of the audience, leaving it barely half full for the speeches of Liam Fox and Penny Mordaunt.

Day two was much worse. And the empty seats reached a nadir for the late-afternoon speech of the new Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright.

Now admittedly it was the graveyard slot at the end of the day, but there were fewer than 200 in the 2,262-seat Symphony Hall in Birmingham's International Convention Centre.

Earlier, during Philip Hammond's big speech on the economy just before lunch, there were also big gaps of empty seats in the hall.

Image: Jacob Rees-Mogg attended a Brexit fringe event

Labour's deputy leader, the Shadow Culture Secretary Tom Watson, tweeted mischievously: "I got a bigger audience for my conference speech than Jeremy Wright - and I didn't even do a conference speech."

Mr Watson can feel entitled to mock. At Labour's conference in Liverpool last week the vast hall was packed throughout and at times delegates were being turned away because it was full.

The contrast doesn't end there. At Labour's conference there were passionate debates - on re-selection of MPs and Brexit, for example - and there were fiery speeches from the floor.

That was a deliberate policy: more speeches by activists from the floor and fewer by MPs and shadow ministers from the platform.

There was also a Momentum conference, The World Transformed, going on at the same time elsewhere in Liverpool, with speeches by leading figures such as John McDonnell and senior union leaders. That event was packed and passionate too.

There's no passion in the hall in Birmingham. There are hardly any speeches from the floor, either. It's just a procession of speeches from ministers and other senior party figures from the platform.

No wonder they're staying away. But where have all the Tories gone?

The answer is they're all at fringe meetings. And mostly fringe meetings about Brexit.

Image: Theresa May watched speeches from the audience

On day one, a Leave Means Leave fringe at which Jacob Rees-Mogg was the main speaker was packed, as was a rally where Nigel Farage was the star turn.

On the other side of the Brexit argument, a Conservatives For A People's Vote meeting, with Anna Soubry, Phillip Lee and Justine Greening, was packed, with standing room only, and activists were spilling out into the corridor.

Are the Tories worried? Clearly. Minister after minister during this conference has spoken about the threat posed to the Tories by Jeremy Corbyn and Labour after their conference last week.

Birmingham was supposed to be the Tory conference attended by more young activists than ever before. And it may well be.

Image: Anna Soubry's fringe event was also more successful

The ICC and the Hyatt Regency Hotel next door are certainly full of young - nearly all male - activists.

A Sky News colleague described them as "teenage boys in their dads' suits". Harsh, but fair.

But these young activists are clearly not interested in sitting in the hall listening to scripted speeches by ministers reading from an autocue.

What they are interested in is the raw politics of fringe meetings in sweaty, overcrowded rooms.

So the Tories have a problem. They need to sex up their conference. Holding a proper debate on Brexit in the main hall would be a start.

The next big event here in Birmingham is the dramatic arrival of Boris Johnson, darling of the grassroots and scourge of the prime minister, on day three of this conference.

After quitting the Cabinet in July, he's banished to the fringe.

Pity the poor Cabinet minister who's speaking in a near-empty conference hall while Boris is raising the roof at his packed fringe meeting.