There’s no pretending that the Conservative Party Conference failed to hit the mark. The whole thing felt a little flat even before the interruptions and coughing during the Prime Minister’s speech. If it weren’t for the frenzy over the party leadership, I suspect there wouldn’t have been many headlines.
That’s both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand we’re in the first year of the Parliament and what the public craves more than anything is calm, consistent Government after four years of political upheaval. The vote catching razzmatazz can be held for a few years until the next General Election comes into view. On the other hand, the public want to hear about more than Brexit.
Two weeks ago, I went along to the Big Tent Ideas Festival – or Tory Glastonbury, as the Financial Times called it. It could not have been more different to the corporate uniformity of our conference. The attendees were drawn not from party membership but from business, industry, academia, the media and politics united by a centre-right view of the world and a desire to talk about the big challenges that await us over the next decade. How do we tackle intergenerational unfairness? How do we maximise the opportunities of automation and digitisation? How do we build houses that are not only affordable to buy but also affordable to live in? And how do we care for a growing elderly population?
The discussion was fascinating and reminded me exactly why I was drawn to politics in the first place. Good policy making can make a huge difference but behind good policy is a rigorous debate that is too often missing from our soundbite obsessed, 140 character limited, public discourse.