An old friend, Michael Boulter, the professor of Palaeontology who discovered the lost continent of Atlantis, (honest!!!) asked me over lunch a couple of days ago what the point of Party Conferences was. I was stumped for an answer. He then suggested that in the Middle Ages people went on pilgrimages in search of salvation, conviviality and that in the fifties Party Conferences fulfilled vaguely the same sort of role.

But who in their right mind wants to pay a small fortune to stay in a ghastly B and B to listen to set piece speeches on motions organised by spin doctors? And there’s the rub. By and large people in their right minds don’t want to go. MPs hate the bloody things and usually swan in for a day to take their Constituency worthies for dinner. The only normal people who roll up are the journalists and the corporate guys who find it all a bit of a chore.

And to the public they are of mind erasing irrelevance,

So my answer to Michael was the only purpose I could see for them was the shagging. Of which the Tories, of course, excel. Something for everyone’s taste, shed loads of attractive girls and pretty boys. You could cut the testosterone in the air with a knife.

But this weekend I have rather changed my mind. The conference season has become rather exciting. All right, the Lib Dems were predictably dull with a completely bonkers plan to spend about £400 million on giving free school meals to all primary school kids. Evidently this was the pork barrel roll in return for an equally bonkers Tory plan to ‘reward’ marriage for a bribe of £150. As far as bribes go this doesn’t even appear on the cash for questions seismometer. You might as well blow it all on a horse for the good it will do. But the right have to feel as if they are doing something to keep the KIPPERS at bay.

And now to the KIPPER conference. What an absolute joy and it is still going on!!! Poor old Godfrey Bloom has been hung out to dry for his sluts remark. Stephan Nolan played the clip on the show last night and it really was an attempt at a joke which went down fairly well. But thumping Michael Crick with an election Manifesto (discuss) is the the final nail in Bloom’s coffin. But he is only vaguely deranged. Nolan did an interview last night with Roger Helmer and asked him about the commitment to ban the Burka. He wasn’t aware of it. Dear old Rog hadn’t read the manifesto. “I’m the energy spokesman ask me any question on that”, he wailed. Nolan just went in for the kill. It was wonderful radio.

And we mustn’t forget Farage had a bit of a pasting for as he evidentially thought at one time that Hitler was not such a bad egg, sang Hitler youth songs and alarmed his teachers at Dulwich College for racist views when he was seventeen. “Well, we all say nasty things when we are young?”
Do we?

And then the cherry on the cake was the naughty boys at the beeb have been up to their tricks. There was a ‘technical’ fault in an interview and a Hitler moustache mysteriously appeared above the Farage lip.

So the conference that was to show UKIP as a serious party has been a splendid farce. And a gift for David Cameron.

But the prize for the most disastrous start has to go to Labour. Everyone knew that the McBride book of poison was to be serialised on the eve of the conference so couldn’t Miliband spinners have done rather better than bring forward some half baked welfare reforms and an off the wall Harman plan to let grannies share maternity leave? Oh, and plan not to increase taxes for those who earn £60K a year. Now that will give comfort to the low paid.

All of us in the press knew what Brown’s gangsters were up to. Of course, those who wrote about it were vilified. But to read the knifings and political executions in black and white is a true gothic horror story. The way the Brown machine was run borders on the evil. Threats, political human sacrifices, smears, sackings and lie after lie. All for what? To propel Brown into Number 10. And that was worth the wait wasn’t it?

It will be spun that Miliband knew nothing about it. This is nonsense. Of course he knew how the operation worked as he was a key member of Team Brown. Ali Campbell used to refer to him as the emissary from Planet Fuck.

To be honest, I doubt whether Miliband was actively smearing the Blairites in the way McBride was, but he stood by and watched it happen. How could any decent person want to work in such a repellant environment? So much energy spent on hatred and malice.

And they are still at it, doing their best to exorcise the party of all things Blair.

The McBride book in all its chilling awfulness has awoken some strange emotions in me. I am beginning to feel very sorry for Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson. They must have felt that they were in the seventh circle of hell.