Conservative Party Conference 2011: Issues and agenda

Onwards to Manchester
 The entrées are over – we've been to Liverpool and Birmingham (no seaside resorts these days), and now it's onto Manchester for the main course: Conservative Party Conference. The Tory leadership will have been preparing for this all summer: this is the one where we'll hear the big announcements, watch speeches from people that the public can actually name, see the real splits and get a sense of where our Government is going. The big issues: Europe, law and order, the riots, welfare, taxation, the deficit plan – these will all dominate the agenda. So too will the personalities – Labour and the Lib Dems have nobody to match William Hague, Kenneth Clarke or George Osborne for interesting. There's also the minor issue of 40,000 protesting TUC members. Finally, it's definitely the conference with by far the best drinking. Anyway, here's our guide for the events from Sunday onwards.
 

The Big Issues
 Conservative Party conferences are famously well scripted: the leadership decides what matters and everyone else falls into line. This year, the theme is three fold: it's the three Rs, rights, responsibilities and the riots. As Allegra Stratton details in the Guardian, the big debate is over whether to be more traditionally conservative or whether to stick with "modernisation". We've had two typically Conservative, highly populist policies come out already: Philip Hammonds plan to increase the speed limit, and Eric Pickles's £250m bung for councils to resume weekly bin collections. But expect lots more serious initiatives to fill out the theme.
 

Modern Compassion

The catchphrase for conference, reports Allegra, is "modern compassionate Conservatism", or in other words, "tough love". We can probably expect most of the big name Cabinet ministers to follow this line. Ken Clarke is likely to speak about the importance of his rehabilitation revolution, Iain Duncan Smith will talk about the progress of his bold welfare reform and Michael Gove will argue as pleasantly as he usually does that we need to radically overhaul schooling to help out the poorest in society. Those are the obvious bits. But since this is the Government, there should also be interesting announcements to back up the sentiments: there are strong hints, for example, that some sort of "conditionality" around welfare payments might be introduced.
 
Then there is the obvious big issue: the economy. Economic growth is slowing, and unemployment rising, which the PM and George Osborne will not be able to avoid mentioning it. At the Lib Dem Conference, Vince Cable delivered a speech so gloomy it made all the Lib Dems watching buzz with happy excitement (there's nothing Lib Dems enjoy more than a good crisis). George Osborne will not be so downbeat: he will almost certainly mention the fact that British borrowing costs are at the lowest level in 60 years and that the deficit reduction plan is going ahead unchanged. But he will also announce some impressive sounding policies to get growth going: the Government has been working on ideas all summer.
 

Dave's Big Speech
 This will all be tied together in David Cameron's speech. He'll probably leave the economics and the bigger announcements to George Osborne and his other Cabinet ministers and instead try to articulate his vision for the country. Like Ed Miliband, Mr Cameron has been doing some thinking – the trick is to appear compassionate, effective and tough simultaneously. Where Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg had to shore up their parties, David Cameron wants to rise above the fray and appeal to the nation. But Dave also needs to explain what he stands for, just as Ed Miliband did (only better). Is he a liberal-conservative, or a "practical Conservative", or a one-nation Conservative, or a Thatcherite, or what?
 
In aid of that, the past year's achievements will be used. So the collapse of Colonel Gaddafi's regime in Libya is likely to feature (that's a nice victory). So too might things like the retreat on NHS reform, which the PM is keen to dress up as Government "listening" (and so take the credit away from the pesky Lib Dems). But past achievements won't be the main focus: Dave is a forward looking Prime Minister, and his idea of what Britain should look like will feature heavily. Most of all, David Cameron will want to dispel the idea that this Government has no purpose other than to cut the deficit. In articulating that, even the much derided "Big Society" might get a mention.
 

The Rebels and the Reading Material
 Not everyone agrees with Dave about the future of the country or the Coalition. If there are rebels, it's easy enough to see where they'll come from: there are two big Tory books being published at this conference. The backbenches' loosest cannon, David Davis, has the Blue Book, a collection of essays by 20 Right-wing Tory MPs that is intended to "point the way ahead" for the Tory Party of the future (hint, it doesn't include Lib Dems, or Europe, or annoying lefty judges).
 
Then there is After The Coalition, which is altogether fresher, but no less trouble for the leadership. This book, which has been serialised in the Telegraph, suggests that David Cameron needs to come up with a distinctive Tory agenda to win the 2015 election (as the name suggests, it very much doesn't involve the Lib Dems). These Tories want Dave to be more radical: to break up public sector monopolies, think up new ways of controlling the excesses at the top of the private sector and encourage egalitarianism.
 

And Then There's Boris ...
 Other than his MPs, David Cameron's other worry is Boris Johnson. The Mayor of London is in reelection mode and the Government is not particularly popular in London. Boris is keen to remind everyone that he's not part of it. The Mayor makes his speech on Tuesday, and he differs with the PM on tax, Europe, welfare (especially housing benefit changes, which hurt Londoners more than anyone else) and much else – expect fireworks.
 

The 'Please No' Issues
 Whether they've contributed to books or not, the more rebellious Tory MPs have issues they want to discuss that No 10 is much less happy with. Top of the list here is Europe. William Hague describes the eurozone as a "burning building with no exits", but he doesn't appear to be doing much about it. The official Government policy now is to encourage further integration, with some "renegotiation" of Britain's relationship later. But there is nothing like Europe to excite the Tory backbenches. 120 of the new 2010 intake recently met up in Westminster to demand a harsher line, while many more are meeting later in October to call for a referendum on Britain's membership.
 
Mark Pritchard, the Secretary of the 1922 committee, recently wrote that the EU has "become a kind of occupying force" and Britain has become "enslaved" to its rules. But thanks to the Lib Dems, and to the delicate balance of diplomacy in Europe (George and Dave don't want to annoy Angela Merkel too much), Europe is something that No 10 can't do anything about. Dave's team thinks that it's a mostly symbolic issue for attention seeking backbenchers (so do many of the backbenchers – Europe is a test of the PM's Right-wingness). That doesn't mean it won't feature though.
 
Europe is not the only thing that hets up the Right. The Human Rights Act, the 50p rate of taxation, overseas aid, NHS reform, defence cuts, law and order even that old battle of grammar schools – these are all issues that could come up and cause trouble for the PM.
 

The Common Enemy
 But ultimately, most backbenchers know that the Government isn't going to join them for a ride on the "ideological hobby horses" (as a Cameron loyalist, Nick Boles, helpfully puts it). But they will be looking for one thing: barbs against the most hated enemy, the "yellow bastard" Liberal Democrats. At the Lib Dem conference, Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, attacked the "Tea Party" tendency of the Tory party, while Vince Cable, the business secretary, seemed to imply that some Conservatives would like to put children up chimneys while Tim Farron, the Lib Dem president, said that a Conservative majority government would be "an absolute nightmare". Tories want revenge: will they get it?
 

And Threatening to Ruin It All
 Just to confirm that this is a Conservative Party Conference, in the North, 40,000 people are expected to take part in a TUC "March for the Alternative" against the Government's spending cuts. The last trade union protest was rather good natured, and the police are not expecting trouble, but if there is some actual violence, it will overshadow the entire event – not what anyone wants.
 Telegraph