Martin Bright

I have to say that I found this year's Conservative Party conference a little lacklustre. I realise this was sort of the whole point -- the "no triumphalism" ordinance and the champagne ban were part of a conscious effort to keep the conference low key, But I do wonder whether the Tory high command overdid it. I came away from Manchester with the distinct impression that we were about to get a Tory government by default. To be fair I left before David Cameron's set-piece speech, but the real temperature of a party conference is always taken away from the conference platform: at the fringes, in the bars and in the snatched conversations in between. The Tories are beginning to get a policy agenda together, but it is still fragmented and lacking in a binding vision.

I just don't understand David Cameron's stubbornness over his alliance with his new friends in fringe European parties. Why make a stand for these people? William Hague's insistence of an apology from David Miliband following his comments at Labour Party conference is plain daft. Miliband may have gone over the top in what he said about Cameron's new allies. But there's no way he will withdraw his comments. Why draw attention to the Conservative Party's connections with these people?  I don't know if Poland's Michal Kaminski really is an anti-Semite or a homophobe or whether he was a member of a neo-fascist group in his youth. Everything David Miliband said about him may be a smear.

Considering the dire situation in which Gordon Brown finds himself, yesterday's speech was really rather good. It gives the party faithful something to cling on to as they begin the grim task of campaigning for a Labour victory in 2010. The obvious question for me after hearing it, though, was "why now?" How can the Prime Minister credibly offer a message of change two years into his premiership? Think back to 2007 and the first flush of the Brownite dawn. His initial offer to the British people was constitutional reform. I know he was already beginning to be persuaded of the arguments for the alternative vote system at this point. The people around him were happy to talk about it. Why didn't he go for it then? And abolition of the hereditary peers: why wait?

Apparently the Labour Party is selling tickets to sit behind Gordon Brown during his leader's speech for a bargain £130 a pop. At the same time they are struggling to fill the seats for their gala fundraising dinner in Brighton. Things are getting desperate. Already, last year in Manchester, the exhibitors' hall was dominated by Labour associated organisations and unions. The corporate world abandoned the party long ago. The interviews in this morning's papers show a new change in the political weather. Ed Balls continues his charm offensive and even borrows the rhetoric of Peter Mandelson's "fighter not a quitter" speech as a rallying call for the party. (I'm not sure it's a great idea to evoke the image of that toe-curling moment though).

With the Baroness Scotland housekeeper mini-scandal still in the air, I hear a delicious rumour. I'm told that in a surreal extension of Labour big tent policy, Gordon Brown approached Shami Chakrabarti about the job of Attorney-General. The hammer of the government's civil liberties turned down the offer. But the latest events provide the  perfect opportunity for Gordon to offer it to her again. Of course he would have to ennoble her first. This would leave Shami in the Lords to act as a convenient thorn in the side of the Tory Party should it win the next election.

It's the perennial problem: platform or no platform, anti-Nazi campaign versus no oxygen of publicity. You'd have thought we'd have sorted this one out by now. I agree with David Blackburn that John Denham's comments comparing the English Defence League to Mosley's Black Shirts risk overstating the significance of this "organisation". It is always tempting to make a historical fascist comparison and they rarely work. The Communities and Local Government Secretary should probably have resisted. Denham may have been clumsy in this instance, but he is at least recognising that a strategy needs to be developed in response this particular historical instance of the rise of the extreme right.

I had the pleasure of chairing the Editorial Intelligence/Policy Exchange/Policy Review/Cass Busines School (Phewee!) debate on the future of the quangocracy last night. I was expecting little common ground between Douglas Carswell, the Tory hammer of the quangos and an audience I thought would be packed with his ideological enemies. But it wasn't like that at all.  Carswell was a very entertaining turn, describing the House of Commons as "monumentally spineless and useless". His view was that select committees should be given the job of holding quangos to account, including making them justify their budgets on an annual basis. This, he said, would at least give give MPs something worthwhile to do and maybe shake them out of their "self-seeking indolence".

Rachel Sylvester's column today provides more than the usual share of insight and high-level gossip -- what more do you want from a political columnist? The following paragraph is devastating about the Prime Minister's handling of the Megrahi affair: "Even members of the Cabinet who remain publicly loyal are privately scathing about Mr Brown’s performance in recent days. “We can’t go on like this,” says one minister. “It’s beyond difficult — it’s farcical. We’re going from one fiasco to another and Government by fiasco doesn’t work. I’ve never been a plotter but I feel total exasperation." Rachel is right to say that this is the Labour Party's Groundhog Day.