Fraser Nelson

You could tell this was the Boris Johnson show because people were smiling when they queued, smiling as they listened and smiling as they left. The mood in the conference hall had been completely transformed: it was as if this were comedy night, and we were waiting for the Prince of Political Standup. He was introduced via a Bond-style video, and made an extraordinary entrance which I tried to record on my iPhone. The quality is not Emmy-winning, but it may give some sense of the mood:- Boris thanked everyone for the Olympics, hailed London as the world’s greatest city and then walked his very fine line of support for Cameron. He did not say that Cameron is brilliant, as we all know by now that he doesn’t think that.

Speaking to John Pieenar on  Five Live, Boris Johnson said he wished to deal with the leadership speculation, shoot it down with “six inch guns”. He did so by repeatedly refusing to say that David Cameron is doing a better job than he would have done. He was behind Cameron “from the very beginning,” he said – perhaps so, but not the question he was asked. And the fun began:- listen to ‘Boris on leadership on Five Live, 7 Oct 12’ on Audioboo In fact, he said, there is an upside that everyone was talking about his destabilising David Cameron. It is “entirely natural” that “there should be a narrative” because it kept the focus on the Tories and off Ed Miliband.

Today's Guardian magazine runs a Michael Gove profile, colouring him blue on the cover as if to alert readers to the threat he poses. "Smoother than Cameron," it warns. "Funnier than Boris. More right-wing than both. Are you looking at the next leader of the Tory Party?" There is nothing unusual about leadership speculation following a  prominent Tory frontbencher, but there is something unusual about the way Gove has ruled it out in almost any way imaginable. He has combined General Sherman and Estelle Morris, saying he wouldn't and couldn't do  the job. It is now being said that Gove is protesting too much, but he has been clear about this for years. I'll add my tuppenceworth. Gove was once, briefly, my news editor at The Times.

Things have come to a pretty pass when the Labour Party is launching a campaign with a deficit clock to expose George Osborne’s shortcomings. But they are about to do today, I understand, highlighting how much extra the government is borrowing over the four days of the Tory conference compared to last year: £277 million, they say. I’ll post the link when it becomes live. Significantly, Labour is shifting from being in a position of deficit denial towards a position where they will (I suspect) sign up to Osborne’s spending plans. As Balls has found out, Osborne’s game is to dress up only-slightly-modified Labour spending plans with Tory language. But Osborne, and David Cameron, have overdone it with the rhetoric.

listen to ‘Ed Miliband conference speech highlights, 2 Oct 12’ on Audioboo.

Every time I come to Manchester for a conference, the perimeter fence guarding the politicians seems to shrink, retreating further towards to the garrison complex. There is something allegorical about this: the debate inside the conference is narrowing, appealing to a bunch of political nerds talking about ‘pre-distribution’ or the ‘big society’. And outside there is real, raw anger from the voters. The closest the general public get to party conferences nowadays is the Victoria Derbyshire show on Five Live, where 250 random people are invited to meet those politicians who dare venture outside the security-sealed conference bubble.  The result is discussion quite unlike anything you’ll hear from a stage-managed conference floor.

Damian McBride promised that he’d never write a memoir, which I imagine is a relief to Ed Balls who now pretends he had little to do with “Mr McBride”. But now and again, the artist formally known as McPoison uses his blog to reminisce. His posts usually full of honesty and insight and today’s post  is no exception. He has reflected on the “African coup”, when Tony Blair announced, without informing Brown, he would fight a third term. His blog is worth reading in full. What jumps out at me is how Ed Balls is working hand in glove with McBride, even texting him orders after the Blair announcement: “You’ve got one job – Gordon and everyone around him needs to be totally disciplined about this. Total discipline.

I’ve written about the deceptive attraction of wealth tax in my Telegraph column today, and I wish I was wasting my time. Once, you could say it was an idea so flawed that it stood no chance of getting into government. In the coalition era, there is no such thing.  Tory ministers will wave through an idea they regard as nuts because the Lib Dems want it, and that coalition is about compromise. Political horsetrading has supplanted rational economic debate, and if the Lib Dems want a wealth tax there is a horribly high chance that Osborne may give way — as he almost did over Mansion Tax. Not because he is weak, but because that’s how this coalition works. Here are my main points. 1. The idea of a wealth tax is superficially attractive.

The party conference season is now underway, with Lib Dems gathering in Brighton. It’s time to admit that our political parties are in a bad way, and this has nothing to do with voter apathy. Britain’s political culture is bursting with life, it’s the parties that are dying. This will be horribly apparent in the conferences. David Cameron couldn’t even fill the hall for his speech last year, the first time in living memory that this happened. This is no reflection on his (usually excellent) speeches but the decay of conferences in general. Since they moved to the cities, they became geared at those with expense accounts rather than membership cards.

The free publicity which comes with party political broadcasts is more powerful than the broadcast itself: nowadays, our MPs hope their messages will go viral. Nick Clegg's apology has: and how. The below video has his voice being digitally altered (like Cher's in Believe) but the result is far catchier. It demands to be watched: The video-maker has done Clegg a favour. Only the most cold-hearted cynic would feel a tinge of sympathy for him  here, which may be been the idea behind the video. What Tony Blair called the 'masochism strategy' where you apologise and get visibly beaten up, ideally by a pensioner, until voters start to pity you.  The funniest thing, to me, is that Clegg isn't apologising for breaking his promise - he's apologising for making it in the first place.

I’m at a YouGov conference in Cambridge where we’re just had a speech from Andrew Lansley, the new Leader of the House. He was speaking about the coalition, and gave a brief history of its inception. 'None of us had, in truth, understood the nature of what a coalition government might be...I’m not even sure the Lib Dems had thought about what a coalition would look like. In normal circumstances, with that election result, there would not have been a coalition. We’d have formed a minority government, put forward a programme, challenged the House to support it or not and after a decent interview - probably a few months - we would have had a general election and would have almost certainly won a majority...

Ed Balls has today made his very own full, open and comprehensive offer to the Liberal Democrats – or, rather, to Vince Cable. The shadow chancellor said he could work very well with Vince (but, pointedly, not Nick Clegg). 'I wish George Osborne would see Vince Cable as a man to do business with and listen to, rather than telling the newspapers he is putting his allies in [to the Business department] to try and surround him and hold him back. Vince should be listened to on banking reform and on the economy. I could work with Vince. I would like the Liberal Democrats to say right now that this coalition has failed and we're going to change course.' Balls can't really work with anyone (just ask Ed Miliband); and nor is he likely to have to.