Adam Boulton Diary: Could Covid-19 spell the end of the party conference?
As a founder of the Quintessentially Group, Ben Elliot purports to arrange almost anything for the rich. But even this nephew of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, can’t fix coronavirus for the Tories. This week Elliot and his co-chairman (sic), Amanda Milling MP, snuck out a letter to members conceding that the annual Conservative Party conference in Birmingham is off. Instead they are moving online to stage a “virtual conference” and “hope we will be able to host some aspects in the physical format”.
The Tories are the last of the major parties to admit defeat. Labour’s National Executive Committee folded their September trip to Liverpool back in May with unspecific muttering about an internet alternative. The Liberal Democrats have embraced technology, promising a full four-day menu of policy motions, votes, training sessions and “Expo” all online instead of in Brighton.
British political activists of every persuasion can dream of next year and what Elliot and Milling call “the traditional conference we all know and love”. American National Conventions only come around every four years as hubs of the Presidential Election cycle. In 2020 neither the Republicans nor Democrats are holding their jamborees as planned.
Covid-19 has knocked out the Anglosphere’s major political set-pieces of 2020. The virus has also turned out to be an accelerating catalyst for societal changes that were already evolving – such as working from home, now known as WFH. Perhaps it is delivering the coup de grace for this very twentieth century way of doing politics.
It is estimated attending “conference” costs a typical member upwards of £700 when accreditation, travel, accommodation, hospitality and time off work are all added up. The health risks are obvious. Delegates pay literally to breathe the same air as their idols in stuffy rooms and corridors. Not an attractive prospect this year.
Beyond rubbing shoulders it is increasingly difficult to tell what either the faithful or the grandees get out of conferences. Both Labour and the Conservatives have de-fanged the ability of their meetings to dictate party policy in a binding way. The Tory hearts were never into such an innovation. They used to come to clap. Labour has learnt that internecine warfare in public seldom impresses the electorate. The Liberal Democrats still relish their policy decisions, which frequently leave the leader explaining that they don’t really want to legalise cannabis or abolish the monarchy.
What the Liberal Democrats do on the conference floor the other parties do on the fringe. Their conferences have become annual opportunities for insurrection. Momentum openly stages The World Transformed, its alternative conference at conference, just down the road from the main event. Hearts aflutter, the Conservatives queue for hours before cramming into the rallies of mavericks such as Michael Heseltine. The conference proper is generally far less well attended and gets less airtime on evening news bulletins.
For the past fifty years US conventions have mainly been about four nights of stage-managed prime time TV coverage for both Republicans and Democrats. But the main US networks are increasingly reluctant to clear their schedules for what is already available on news channels.
Unlike the conferences the conventions do at least have obvious reasons for taking place. They nominate “the ticket” – candidate and vice-presidential running mate – and endorse “the platform”, the US version of a manifesto. Like the conferences, the conventions are also beauty pageants for upcoming stars in the party and the pretext for backroom lobbying and influence pedalling.
Not this year. The Democratic National Convention, or DNC, was originally due to get underway next week in the swing state of Wisconsin. It has been postponed for a month, until the week before the RNC. The Democrats now say all events will be virtual from different locations around the country. Joe Biden will deliver his acceptance speech in Milwaukee but almost everyone will watch it on screen. Both parties face the Premier League style problem of how to provide cheering crowds when there’s no crowd, let alone marching bands and cascades of red, white and blue balloons.
Things have been more difficult still for the RNC. Trump first opted, provocatively, for Charlotte, North Carolina. But Covid reduced him to tweeting furiously “Democrat Governor, @RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood and unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed…full attendance in the Arena.” He switched his big speech to Republican Jacksonville, Florida although “official business” is still being handled out of Charlotte for contractual and financial reasons.
Since then coronavirus has spiked in the Sunshine State. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, usually a prominent Trump cheerleader, won’t say if he will lift the rule he has imposed that all indoor gatherings must be less than half full. The Republican Mayor of Jacksonville Lenny Curry has already said he expects the capacity ban to stay, along with the compulsory wearing of masks and an alcohol ban.
Perhaps Trump is not all that welcome. His speech is set to coincide with the 60th anniversary of Ax Handle Saturday, a low point in Jacksonville’s civil rights history when members of the NAACP’s youth movement staging a peaceful sit-in at a “Whites Only” lunch counter were chased and beaten with ax handles and baseball bats.
The President now says his convention plans are “flexible”. He thrives on mass rallies of his supporters and does not want to risk another fiasco like his half empty rally last month in Tulsa. Those no-shows in Oklahoma, in spite of an alleged million applying for tickets, show that the Trump Campaign’s list of online supporters has been adulterated by his political opponents. Young TikTok users claim to have organised the sabotage.
This is very bad news for planning and fundraising. Conventions and conferences have become money makers for political parties. In the UK the money raised may be small change compared to the US, but one senior party manger told me the only reason conferences still go on is because “they are worth several hundred thousand pounds to the party”. Lobbyists usually make up the single largest group at conference, and they pay handsomely for their access, their exhibition stands and their parties. The media are charged facility fees as well and the parties take a rake off from the main conference hotels, which inflate their prices. Even so the ever-mounting costs of security are largely borne locally much to the annoyance of councillors and police chiefs.
Party managers may be counting the lost revenue, but I doubt very much that many senior politicians will miss not having to go to conference this year – except of course for the bibulous and the libidinous. Many MPs, including frontbenchers from both parties, already avoid conference if they can, unwilling to pay through the nose to be harangued by activists swigging the drinks they’ve just bought them.
The virtual world offers other ways to get the message out and to conduct political business – often involving more people, which is what politics is really about. In America it’s a style which suits the somewhat gaffe-prone 78-year-old Joe Biden, and which has left nearly 74 year old Donald Trump floundering. (Trump’s birthday is next week June 14).
Biden wants the election to be about Trump, not him. He is happy to let the attack videos, mainstream media and online debate do the talking for him. Trump needs the adrenaline of big, unchallenged, public appearances. Covid is denying him his fix.
After this year’s virtual versions the conventions are unlikely to revert fully to the old style. Pat Keaveney, an expert on party conferences from Edge Hill University, argues that they will carry on in the UK – because they are integral to the constitutions of the Labour and Liberal Democrats and because “for opposition parties conferences can be the only real guarantee of a public platform”. But they don’t have to take place physically. If the right people, including politicians and media, can’t be bothered to go to conference; if staging them becomes an expense rather than an income; then such gatherings may soon follow the money out of the door permanently.