Wasting my young years

51 conferences and counting

Some people have seen Springsteen 50 times. Or been to Old Trafford 50 times. Or bagged a munro 50 times. I realised with a mixture of amusement and horror this week that I have been to 50 party conferences. Well 51, now, as I bagged the Lib Dems in Brighton.

I remember once pitching up to the 2013 Labour conference, just as my Spotify playlist randomly started playing Wasting My Young Years by London Grammar, which felt a bit on the nose.

So anyway, as I face my 52nd conference in Liverpool this weekend, here are some random recollections from wasting all my young years:

• I was 22 when I first got a job working for the Press Association in the Houses of Parliament in 2005. A year later, my first party conference was the Lib Dems in Brighton (where everyone was talking about Ming Campbell being past it – he was 65), followed by Labour in Manchester. It was Tony Blair’s last as leader and PM. My job was to sit in the hall with a copy of the speech to check he said what he was supposed to say. He did. I think I’ve still got the speech in a box in the loft. The only thing I really remember from it was his line in response to a story that his wife, Cherie, had called Gordon Brown a liar. Blair showed the political power of a joke to diffuse a difficult story: “At least I don't have to worry about her running off with the bloke next door."

• A booking mix-up in 2007 meant I was turfed out of one of Blackpool’s less fine B&Bs, only to be relocated by the conference company into a golf club and spa hotel. Unparalleled luxury for a humble scribe on the Western Morning News. Bit weird going swimming in the morning – the lobby’s big beasts didn’t seem quite so big and scary once you’d seen them in their speedos. The hotel’s location also meant a long cab ride to the Winter Gardens, including passing a shop named, in big capital letters, WE SELL FAGS. It was the Tory conference where David Cameron made a big show of standing at his hotel window apparently tearing up his speech for the benefit of a photographer outside, before coming on stage the next day with his “it might be messy, but it’s me” no-notes monologue, with the one aim of stopping Gordon Brown calling a snap election. It worked.

• “That’s my majority you’re talking about.” Normally the punch-ups at conference are purely verbal. Imagine the journalistic excitement when word went round of actual fisticuffs, and at the Lib Dem conference too. Better still, one of those involved was an MP from my patch, Adrian Sanders, the MP for Torbay. “A senior Liberal Democrat MP yesterday decked a party activist in a seaside showdown,” was how the Mirror reported the battle for Bournemouth seafront in 2008. The activist was Mark Littlewood, a former party spin doctor, who had published a report predicting wipeout for the Lib Dems. In the scuffle he fell over a low wall. He later became a cheerleader for Liz Truss. 

• If people think Keir Starmer has had a poor run-up to his conference this weekend – winter fuel payments, who buys his wife’s dresses, why Sue Gray is paid more than him – it’s nothing compared to David Cameron’s nightmare in 2014. First Brooks Newmark resigned as a Tory minister after reports he sent a “graphic picture exposing himself while wearing a pair of paisley pyjamas”. Then the Tory MPs Mark Reckless and Douglas Carswell defected to Ukip. I got into a bit of trouble for reporting that Cameron was touring the conference parties raging at Reckless letting down volunteers who had “knocked on doors, stuffed envelopes, licked stamps to get his fat arse on the Commons benches, and this is how he repays them”. In the end Tory spin doctors relented when they realised the boss was happy to have the “fat arse” jibe out there. It was a quote only bettered by Boris Johnson turning up to make a speech which included the eye-watering line: “I have read that there are some people – probably the type who are thinking of defecting to UKIP – who present themselves at A&E with barely credible injuries sustained through vacuum cleaner abuse.”

• “All the action is on the fringe” is what people say when the main podium speeches are boring. So journalists go off to small meeting rooms when a panel of people chew over a topic, in the hope an MP or minister will go off message. The strike rate on these events is poor. Better to choose the ones which are listed in the conference brochure with a logo of a cup and saucer, because at least that means there will be food. In 2017 I was at the back of a stuffy room where Lib Dems were talking about how they missed the EU. I leant against the wall for support. All the lights went off. Before anyone could blame Brexit, I used a shoulder blade to flick the switch behind me and turn them on again. That was the most exciting thing that happened.

• Conference can be a dangerous business. In Birmingham one year I was rushing to a group dinner with a cabinet minister.  My colleague and I struggled to navigate the city’s complicated network of roundabouts and flyovers, and ended up clambering over some railings and tripping up some stairs. During the course of which I slammed my wrist. Really slammed it. I went to the dinner and tried to self-medicate with red wine while listening to the minister’s views on the government’s failings, but when that didn’t work I made my excuses and headed to A&E. Several hours and an x-ray later, I arrived back at my hotel, with my arm in one of those velcro splint things. Not broken, but battered and bruised. In every sense. After a couple of hours of poor sleep, I still worked the next day. Typing was just a bit slower than usual.

• The thing about party conferences these days is they are so carefully organised and stage-managed, that anything going even slightly wrong, or just out of the ordinary, is welcome relief. Jeremy Corbyn accidentally reading out the autocue note “Strong message here”. Ed Miliband accidentally forgetting the deficit. Vince Cable accidentally saying “exotic spresm”. Keir Starmer getting glittered. No harm done in the end. Just not planned. But I was also in the room for was supposed to be known as Theresa May’s “British Dream” speech, but is now known as “The One Where She Had A Coughing Fit, And Then Someone Gave Her A P45, And Then She Coughed More, And Then The Chancellor Gave Her A Lozenge, But If Anything That Made The Coughing Worse, And Then Boris Johnson Had To Be Told By Amber Rudd To Stand During Another Ovation To Cover The Coughing, And Then The Letters Fell Off The Backdrop Speech”. Once again I was sitting in the hall with a copy of the speech. So I could see the big announcements coming. But the coughing buried the lot. Around us party members were standing and clapping, while tutting at the non-partisan media for not joining in. An awful moment on a human level. Never to be forgotten.

• I once met a party leader for an off-the-record chat, who expressed some irritation at some of the coverage of their conference. Indeed there was one reporter of whom he said he wanted to “knock his block off”. When I passed on this light-hearted remark to said reporter, I was rather alarmed to find he then made an official complaint to the party, and formal apologies had to be issued. Years later, I wish I’d kept it to myself.

• Obviously Liz Truss was always worth watching at conferences. From 2014’s “we import two thirds of our cheese…. That. Is. A. Dis. Grace” to  2022’s “Wrong. Wrong. Wrong” where she tore up half her own policy platform. I once interviewed Truss at a conference fringe event, and noted that she had been a republican but changed her mind; had been a Lib Dem but changed her mind; had been a Remainer but changed her mind. How did she know she wasn’t wrong about her conversion to low-tax, pro-growth economics? That was in 2019.

• My birthday is September 25. Which means I am often away at conferences. I have interviewed Angela Rayner at an 8am breakfast event on my birthday. I’ve been trapped in a karaoke booth with Lib Dems. For my 30th my incredible wife carried a (very heavy) carrot cake in the shape of Big Ben on the train from Hampshire to Brighton to surprise me. The standout memory though is the birthday I ended up in a sex toy themed crazy golf course with a number of Times colleagues, including a member of the House of Lords. I shall not be taking questions.

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Life is a rollercoaster

Last year I interviewed Ed Davey during Lib Dem conference at Smugglers Cove Adventure Golf, wearing tricorn hats, asking him questions about social care and why he didn’t do more for the subpostmasters. (Some in the party claim it was the inspiration for his stunt election campaign).

Well this week I did the obvious thing, and took him on a rollercoaster on Brighton pier, challenging him to name as many of his 72 Lib Dem MPs as possible. We did a separate interview on policy on the 2p machines, but that hasn’t gone as viral as the rollercoaster video.

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My book, Planes, Trains and Toilet Doors: 50 Places That Changed British Politics, is out in paperback on October 10, with a bonus chapter on the place that shaped Keir Starmer’s leadership. Pre-order now.

‘’F *** ing brilliant. I would describe it as like a bag of political nuts – moreish and fabulously salty’ JOE LYCETT