James Forsyth

The Liberal Democrats might be in the single digits in the polls, but they were distinctly chipper this week. There’s one simple explanation for this, the political landscape gives them hope that there will be another hung parliament and they will be in government again after 2015. But I think there is another factor behind this Lib Dem cheer: they’ve come to terms with what they’ve done in government.   Large parts of Clegg’s speech today seemed designed to prepare activists with lines to use on the doorstep. When it came to the tuition fees, the tone was—despite Clegg’s earlier apology—strikingly defiant. He said, ‘when you meet people who still aren't sure about us, ask them this: How will you judge us?

In a sign of his enhanced status in the party, Danny Alexander has been one of the main attractions on the conference fringe this year. This evening, it was standing room only when he was interviewed by The Independent’s Steve Richards. Alexander was on feisty form. He declared that ‘both the other parties are pretty useless’ and that the Liberal Democrats had ‘done a bloody good job for this country’. Marking his own homework, he gave the party 10 out of 10 for being credible and effective. But he said that the Lib Dems had to shout louder to get their share of the credit for the economic recovery.

The Lib Dems leadership might have hoped that it had moved on from tuition fees. But tonight’s League of Young Voters fringe was dominated by the topic. Lynne Featherstone, a Lib Dem Minister, says that she would like to shoot the Lib Dem negotiating team for not making the issue a red line in the coalition negotiations. Quite what her Lib Dem ministerial colleagues who were on that team—Danny Alexander and David Laws—will make of that remains to be seen. Tim Farron, the party president, was more judicious in his language. But he did say that the negotiating team should have realised that the electorate’s sense of what the party’s red lines should have been, should have been taken into account more.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_2_Oct_2014_v4.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman review the conference season" startat=604] Listen [/audioplayer]Normally, the last party conference season before an election clarifies matters. But, so far, this one has not. Instead, it has merely compounded the factors  that make the next election so difficult to call. The reason why people are reluctant to predict a Labour majority despite its current poll lead and the structural factors in its favour, is that it trails on the economy and leadership by margins that would usually be considered terminal. Its conference didn’t address these problems successfully. Indeed, with Ed Miliband forgetting the section on the deficit it has compounded them.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_2_Oct_2014_v4.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman review the conference season" startat=604] Listen [/audioplayer]Today’s speech was all about equipping the Tories with the weapons they’ll need to fight the next election. The Cameroons have always been convinced, with justification, that the Tories can only hope to win elections if they neutralise the NHS as an issue. So, we saw Cameron giving the party a shield on that issue—a promise to increase spending on the NHS every year. This was combined with Cameron’s most personal—and angriest—response yet to Labour efforts to suggest that he’s privatising or running down the NHS.

Boris Johnson was on loyal form tonight at the Conservative Home rally. He told the audience that the Tory advantage on leadership and the economy would see voters coming over to the party ‘in droves’. He even predicted a 1983 style win for the Tories—which considering that the Tory majority then was 144 seemed more than a little bit over optimistic. The Mayor of London was so in sync with the leadership’s strategy that he even moved straight from Europe to English votes for English laws, the issue that Cameron and co believe can stop the bleeding to Ukip. There were, though, perhaps a few markers laid down for the future.

The Tory Party is angry. Making my way into the conference centre, every Tory Minister and MP I bumped into wanted to vent about Mark Reckless. Unlike with Douglas Carswell, there is no personal warmth towards him and there is a real sense that Reckless lied repeatedly about his intentions. Grant Shapps gave voice to that frustration in his speech. In an extended attack on Reckless, he declared ‘We have been let down by somebody who has repeatedly lied to his constituents and to you’. He then added, ‘He lied and he lied and he lied’.

When Douglas Carswell defected, many Tory MPs were quick to say that an aggressive campaign against him would be counter-productive. There is none of that talk today. listen to ‘Podcast special: Mark Reckless defects to Ukip’ on audioBoom Listening to Tories this afternoon one is struck by how so many of them view the Reckless defection as different to the Carswell one. They point out Carswell didn’t regularly deny that he was going to defect in the way that Reckless did. Reckless’s timing is also far more clearly designed to hurt the Tory party than Carswell’s was. Judging by the conversations I’ve had this afternoon, the whips won’t find it hard to get Tory MPs down to Rochester to campaign.