Conference Diary - Sunday

Well, I finally made it to the sunny delights of Blackpool ... after spending 3 1/2 hours broken down on the M6 (not my car)! Like others, I applied for my conference pass back in July. Also like others, I have been phoning Fingerprint Events every day for the past week in order to find out why I still hadn't been accredited. Eventually, yesterday, somebody decided they ought to let me in after all and I didn't even have to queue for more than a couple of minutes today before being able to collect my pass, so there's no turning back now.

Before leaving home this morning, I did catch some of David Cameron's interview with Andrew Marr. Coming in as they were discussing the Conservatives' dramatic loss of strength in all the opinion polls over the past year, with Marr saying something about needing "to have an analysis of what you need to change and therefore what went wrong" in order to bring about change, I thought he was about to pick up the conference theme and ask Cameron whether it was "time for change" in the direction or even, if Marr was really unsympathetic, in the leadership of the Party. However, he let Cameron plough on to talk about crime and the breakdown in responsibility in evidence across the country.

Cameron went on to assert that "We have a real opportunity after last week where there was a long list of pledges but no explanation. No explanation of how we get there." As I noted yesterday, whether in three days' time we will have seen sufficient breadth and depth of policy announcements and whether they hold together as a coherent expression of the Party's vision to heal our broken society could determine whether Gordon Brown has the courage to opt for an early election and could determine what kind of Government this country has for the next five years: another five years of "nanny knows best," top-down, big state interference, or the chance to build a new society in which families and communities are empowered to take control of their our lives. The challenge is indeed huge. Let us all hope he rises to it, or we will all be the worse off for it.