Labour party

The Tory party has been at peace with itself this week. Eurosceptic backbenchers have given Nigel Farage a verbal kicking on the fringe, Cabinet ministers have stuck resolutely to the ‘hard- working’ conference script, and even Boris Johnson has behaved himself. Gay marriage, which so divided the leadership from the grassroots, has barely been mentioned, and you’d never know that just a month ago David Cameron lost a Commons vote on Syria. The new harmonious mood has come about in part because the leadership has moved towards the rest of the party. Tory conference was once decorated with posters extolling the benefits of ‘the big society’. Now, there is a simple Conservative message: ‘Welfare Capped: Immigration Down: Crime down’.

Eric Pickles has a vivid imagination. He set out to remind the Conservative faithful today the dangers of letting Labour back into office, and why they, not the Tories, are the real nasty party. He painted a picture of where Britain might be if we were living under a Labour coalition: 'Labour would have quickly lost the confidence of the markets for failing to tackle the deficit. Mortgage rates would have soared, and after that, taxes too. The Chancellor, Ed Balls, would be extending his so-called “mansion tax” to ordinary family homes...the Business Secretary – Unite’s Baron McCluskey of Mersey Docks – would be abolishing Margaret Thatcher’s trade union reforms and turning the clock back to the 1970s.

Like Charles Moore in this week’s Spectator, I am inclined to wonder whether there is 'any conceivable good reason' why 16-year-olds should have the vote. As a teenager interested in politics, I found not being eligible to cast a ballot until this year frustrating but reasonable. The idea that, at 18, I would become an adult, and as an adult I would be able to vote, made perfect sense. Departing from this principle by picking an arbitrary voting age is, as Moore points out, a slippery slope: what about all those politically oppressed 8 year olds? It is never argued that 16-year-olds should have the vote as part of a broader scheme to lower the age of majority - which is what happened to 18-year-olds in 1969 and which would at least be a logical policy suggestion.

If you're looking for two phrases to summarise this year's Labour conference, they'd be 'Britain can do better than this' (in case you missed its fleeting reference in Ed Miliband's speech) and 'bring it on'. Ed Miliband has decided that even though he doesn't poll above his party like Cameron, or have a history of impressing in broadcast and question-and-answer performances like Nick Clegg, he can still enter a presidential-style 2015 election without fear.

In his Guardian column tomorrow, Jonathan Freedland writes that Ed Miliband reckons he’ll "get a kicking from the Daily Telegraph" for his lurch to the left, but his ‘gamble’ is that he’ll survive it. The Times and the Daily Mail have not given his remarkable speech much of a better reception (above). All three newspapers can see what’s at stake here: a very dangerous principle, dug out of its 1970s grave and held up for applause at the Labour Party conference. It is now okay for a PM to govern by issuing edicts to private companies and having them do what he wants. Today, Miliband has said his government would issue two kinds of threats. One is to property companies: ‘build more houses, or we’ll confiscate your land!’.