David cameron

Annabel Goldie, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, made an odd admission at a fringe event last night. Asked how she would campaign against AV next May, she disclosed that there wouldn’t be a concerted campaign because ‘people have already made-up their minds’. I’m told that David Mundell, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, sat in impassive agreement while the audience raised its collective eyebrow. Conservatism hasn’t scaled Hadrian’s Wall for twenty years. Representation is thin because residual loathing for Thatcher and Major runs deep. Loud partisanship against AV may incite the hostile populace to vote for it out of spite. Discretion looks the better part of valour.

Has somebody stolen the Tory Party? A stranger walking around here would have no idea that its their conference. The word "Conservative" or "Tory" is nowhere to be seen. Just a slogan, "Together in the national interest" – a form of words that Cameron has repeatedly used to describe the coalition. As I say in my News of the World column today, Cameron will this week perform the impossible – to de-Tory the Tory conference and make them love it. There is plenty Tory red meat being served: welfare reform, school reform. It wouldn't susprise me if an announcement on keeping Trident is made this week. So the activists are happy. They also know that there is less than three weeks to the spending review and the battle that accompanies it, so they are in loyalty mode.

The Tory conference in Birmingham is the last big political event before the cuts come. After the 20th, every time a senior Tory appears in public for the next few years they will be about why this or that is being cut. As the row over defence shows, these questions will come from right across the spectrum. For this reason, Simon Schama’s interview with Cameron in today’s FT is probably one of the last that will start with the assumption that Cameron is genial, non-ideological fellow. Once the cuts are happening, it will be harder to cast Cameron as a consensual figure. His edges will appear harder, more defined.  But when Schama asks Cameron what he wants his legacy to be we get a reminder of how non-ideological Cameron is.

Amongst BBC political staff, there’s mounting concern about the plans for a strike during Tory conference. One of them said to me at Labour conference that they just didn’t know what to do, they had been put in an impossible position by the decision to call the strike on such politically important days. These journalists fear that striking during Tory conference would undermine the corporation’s reputation for impartiality. So, a whole host of them wrote to their union rep asking him to make representations on their behalf.

The day after the leader’s speech is always a slightly flat time at a party conference. But Manchester today feels particularly flat. Everyone knows that the two big political stories are happening down in London: David Miliband’s expected announcement that he is not standing for the shadow Cabinet and the Fox flap. One of the challenges for Ed Miliband is going to be asserting his authority with his parliamentary colleagues, most of whom didn’t vote for him. Added to this is the fact that many of them remember him as a young bag-carrier. Members of the shadow Cabinet were openly mocking his ‘new generation’ line last night. All this is going to make his performances in the Commons chamber more important than usual.