Conferences and stage managed politics

By Lisa Nandy MP / @lisanandy

In the last week I, like many others, have been watching the Liberal Democrat conference with interest. I worked for a children’s charity until May, so this is the first year in quite some time that I haven’t been at all three main party conferences. Over the last few years I’ve found the level of genuine debate at the Lib Dem conference quite striking. It’s never had the buzz or hype of the other two conferences, and it often has the feel of a sleepy gathering of community activists rather than a place to debate national affairs. Nevertheless, I have always been impressed by the appetite for debate at fringe events and the ferocious attacks that Liberal Democrat parliamentarians have been subjected to by disgruntled activists when they step out of line.

So it was with surprise that I watched Nick Clegg being questioned by his activists about the party’s record in the coalition government.

Since coming into office the Liberal Democrats have propped up a budget that imposes the ‘savage’ cuts they campaigned against in the election. A budget that is unfair by anyone’s reckoning: it hits women, children and the less well off disproportionately hard. As if that wasn’t enough, they have backed the introduction of free schools and academies that will push funding from the most disadvantaged to the least in need. They are selling off Royal Mail and have watered down their opposition to their flagship policy on tuition fees. And they are presiding over the most breathtaking politicisation of the police, having opposed it as ‘populism, extremism and politicisation’ during the campaign.

In the context of this I was expecting their conference to be explosive, but despite some heated debate on the conference floor after most of the senior ministers had left, there was very little expression of the anger and disquiet that many long-standing Liberal Democrats must be feeling.

My interest in this goes beyond party politics. As Labour prepares to meet for its first conference in opposition since 1996 (when I was still doing my A-levels) I am interested in whether this stage-managed approach has to be a feature of modern politics. Is it possible to be a credible government – or government-in-waiting – and still allow for dissent and debate? In government it felt like any attempt to have a genuinely open discussion was seized on by the media and the Tories as a sign that the party was falling apart. It didn’t seem to matter whether that disagreement was in relation to complex policy questions because in the end it was presented as a personality clash.

So, as well as the drama around the leadership contest, the next week will be a significant test of whether the Labour Party has the strength to defy this trend. I hope we can because over the past months a significant number of people in my Wigan constituency have joined the party – many of them young and hoping to play a part, however small, in the future direction of the party and of the country. I am sure they are also asking themselves, if we can’t have a proper debate at conference, where can we?