CONFERENCE 02: Fringe players
Bournemouth diary, days II & III
Important stuff
On Tuesday and Wednesday the most important people in Bournemouth, and the men with the most serious job of work, were David Trimble and Jeffrey Donaldson. As Stormont stumbles towards its end, and the inevitable departure of Sinn Fein from the pretence of being politicians, the question now is, what will the government do with the 1st Minister? It seems highly unlikely that exclusion — the chucking out of Sinn Fein from the institutions established under the Agreement — will be the option pursued by the NIO. The chief reason for this is that, for this approach to work, the SDLP would have to be prepared to stay within the devolved, power-sharing administration, but they lack the moral and political courage for this. So it boils down to what John Reid thinks can be done with Mr Trimble. As things stand, it looks as if the Secretary of State has come to the obvious and accurate conclusion that he can have no more use for David Trimble than does the Ulster Unionist Council.
Quentin Davies and the current UUP leader staged a fringe at the Purbeck room, in which Mr Trimble was understandably flat, despite the encouragement of an overwhelmingly supportive audience (which included, for a while, Mr Donaldson). His own party conference is coming up later in the month in Londonderry, and it’s hard to see where he’ll be after this. The government could suspend the institutions with view to continuing their four year cosseting of Mr Trimble’s leadership (a process which has been reinforced by both Dublin and Washington), but this seems highly unlikely. What utility David Trimble had, both to ‘the process’, and, more relevantly, his own party has been extinguished this last week. For it wasn’t only Sinn Fein who were found out [sic], it was also the strategy predicated on governing with them. And with that strategy, its progenitors are soon to depart too. Mr Reid is an ambitious man who doesn’t want his progress upwards to be stained by too much failure in Ulster. He will need an Ulster Unionist leader he can work with, and make what’s left of devolution work through: that man was in Bournemouth, but he wasn’t sharing a platform with Quentin.
Less important stuff
It was a decent enough speech by David Davis — whom, we learnt again, grew up in a council house — with fewer policies in it for the ‘great 25’ than most of his peers had to roll out, but still, his sounded convincing. Moreover it has the whiff of stuff that might actually resonate with people who aren’t presently voting for us, which is more than we can say for some of the stuff we’ve heard this week. Not that many of us flocked to the Conference hall to listen to Mr Willetts. Though the worst speech to date was, beating even milord Ancram’s gamely inept effort, Bernard’s. It’s not to feel pity for a man who knows better even than his audience how far out of his depth he is. The shadow defence secretary also reinforces a central point of ERO orthodoxy: the Tory party is not going to recover until it gets shot of all the former Oxford Union presidents in its ranks.
One person who avoided the hall for Mr Davis’s speech was the leader, and one person entirely absent from beside the sea has been Mr Portillo. However his former supporters have been grossly evident, and one does wonder how much longer the chief executive will have to endure his loneliness in Smith Sq. without the comfort and support of Messrs. Gibb and Smith? Certainly they made Conference a much more familiar sort of event for him, almost like old times. Of which more anon.
What was she wearing?
Displaying yet again why we need more women in more prominent political positions, St Therese of the many wardrobes put in an appearance, along with the chief whip, at the ‘secret session’ for MPs and candidates on Wednesday. David Maclean is, we can all agree, an extremely intelligent and able man; the party chairman, we can, with characteristic ERO generosity, agree is not an intelligent and able man. That certainly was the impression your correspondent gained from her proffered, confidential wisdom: ‘go out and tell the media what a success conference has been’. Maybe, on reflection, this was not the smartest thing to do?
Mind you, we’re all grateful here for Mrs May’s work — I think it’s fair to say that most people thus far who have been told, don’t read ERO have reacted, ‘what is ERO? where can I read it?’
A thing of beauty
John Hayes — my provisional choice for leader — sadly mislaid his briefcase at a meeting on Wednesday, which promptly caused a security alert and was mutilated as a result by the Fuzz. This, though, was merely a foretaste of the fire alarm that emptied the Highcliff in the small hours. An amiably drunken crowd formed outside and started cheering as the great and good started tumbling out. Olive was wearing candy striped jim-jams, looking, according to the cove propped up beside me, ‘like something Paddington Bear would have worn’. Basil Feldman, the party's engaging and vivacious former president, emerged wearing something that was a cross between a nightgown and a woollen waist coast that Nehru might have sported at Harrow before the first war.
I’ve reported back to my esteemed colleague, the snake, on the comings and goings of the Candidates Association, and you’ll doubtless receive a fuller bulletin in due course from that direction. Truth to tell, Tuesday and Wednesday have been inordinately low key days (which those of us old fashioned enough to like the party, and want to see it prosper, can consider as good news). What’s interested me most this week is Graham Turner’s revelation in the Telegraph that John Major wanted Malcolm Rifkind to become party chairman in 1995, and someone else, in succession to Douglas Hurd, to become Foreign Secretary. Who was it? Haven’t the slightest — suggestions on an email, please.
Kit Kildare is ERO’s political correspondent [and should have delivered his copy much earlier.]
Kit Kildare, October 10, 2002 11:17 PM