Tory conference viewed from the other side of the barricades
Portal technology does not yet exist. There’s no way to project one place into the three-dimensional space of another. Yet if there was, it would probably look something like this: a spot of earth ring-fenced by security railings colour-coded by a Kindergarten assistant with Gay-Glo vibes. “Welcome to Manchester,” they say, but also scream: “Keep Away! Danger! Beyond this point lies the open pit of Westminster politics.”
All of which is to say that the Tories came North this week, and, on Tuesday, I made my annual pilgrimage to stand in the margins, peer through the security railings, and briefly glimpse the Big Time. Yes, that’s it, right there, quaffing champers on the concourse. That’s the National Stage momentarily manifesting in Manchester.
The day promised sunshine but would continually give showers. It was very on-brand, but not just for mercurial Manchester. It’s very on-brand for this mercurial Conservative Party too. Levelling up used to be their mantra. Now it’s levelling down that has become their big pre-election gimmick. Rishi Sunak has gone Napoleonic on the northern leg of HS2; like a battlefield surgeon too quick with the saw. He’s cauterising the stump with promises of investment north of Birmingham, south of Birmingham, and, in fact, everywhere now that HS2 is little more than a historic entry on Wikipedia.
So much for the last spluttering vestige of Johnson’s victory in 2019, the last stop for George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse. Now we have the airy fantasy of “Network North”, but all one can think about is how long-term decisions look almost identical to short-term electioneering.
The Tory presence in Manchester is also something of an illusion. These conferences are meant to gesture towards a broader truth about politics being national and parties appealing to everybody instead of just their safe seats. Yet the Tory conference impacts Manchester in such a limited way that one wonders why they’re here at all. Why not Brighton or Winchester or Bath?
Arriving in the city, you will notice very little out of the ordinary unless you are attuned to the incongruities. Walking along Deansgate, I pass the Café Nero, and there sitting prominently in the window, deep in conversation, is Kamal Ahmed, former Editorial Director of BBC News. I’m not sure how many people would spot a former Editorial Director of BBC News, but it is confusing because former Editorial Directors of BBC News are not usually seen sitting in the window of the Café Nero on Deansgate. Something is amiss.
If you walk on, you might next notice the higher percentage of well-dressed chaps making their way towards the big Central Convention Complex, locally known as GMEX. Follow the tan trousers (usually worn with non-matching jackets and impractically white shirts with big collars) and you will eventually begin to notice the heavy police presence and security measures, which feel more pronounced than in other years. There is a distinct sense of the Green Zone during the US’s time in Iraq about this land grab.
Yet there’s always been a degree of provocation on both sides around these conferences. Stories of friction between locals and visitors are routine every year. Here in 2023, a story emerges on social media (boosted by GB News) that a group of Tories have been thrown out of a Manchester gay bar simply for being Tories. The owner claims they were rejected for rude and aggressive heckling. It’s a story that has something for everybody. It plays to the heavy nuances, the sense you sometimes feel from Conservative politicians, that there is a political advantage in being disliked by the right kind of people. Mancunians, for example. Or maybe just Northerners in general now that everybody has stopped talking about “Workington man”.
Labour has an advantage when it holds its conferences in a red city, such as Liverpool next week (I have yet to decide if I’ll go to watch that from the fringes). For the Tories, it produces a siege mentality which they often appear to welcome, as if the walk to the conference is a rite of passage, allowing them to revel in a parochial sense of victimhood.
This year, Sunak was in town to deliver a tough message sure to play poorly in the North but generate different sentiments where Tory votes matter. The “party willing to make itself unpopular in order to do the right thing” has always been a strategy, a selling point, and even a psychology that extends deep into these conferences in Manchester. Attendees emerging from the self-contained media ecosystem noticeably divest themselves of their conference passes before they push through the ranks of police. They know. We all know. The difficulties arise when the pantomime meets the real world.
The bigger names stay at The Midland Hotel – one of many buildings Hitler was meant to have planned to use had he successfully invaded England. The hotel is a rather lumpen piece of Edwardian baroque dropped into the middle of the city. Before it sits the equally lumpen security gate into the conference site. Beyond that is the bright and distinctly modern St Peter’s Square where the protestors gather. The area has seen plenty of protests. Down the block is the site of the old Free Trade Hall, where Bob Dylan first went electric and where a heckler famously shouted “Judas”. A statue of Emmeline Pankhurst is one of the newest additions to the square. Another is that perennial nuisance to the Westminster Tories, Steve Bray, now visiting Manchester and being drowned out by protesting doctors.
The British Medical Association (BMA) are holding a rally and their presence has all the menace of a Labrador on a bouncy castle. Think colourful hats, free badges, and singalong. I chat briefly with Steve, who I vaguely know because of a cartoon I once drew of him. I say that security appears heavier than in other years. He agrees but insists that’s despite a lack of Tories, who he says are less numerous. He also says he misses “a good austerity march” because to him we’re still in austerity. I sense that he regrets a lack of engagement from the crowd. Lack of engagement with the Tories too.
I fall back into the crowd of orange hats with the BMA logo and emerge at the tent belonging to the Socialist Workers. Beyond them is the security barrier which are blocks of concrete covered by tarps sanctioned by the National Counter Terrorism Security Office. Scanning the QR codes takes you to the website of the National Vehicle Threat Migration Unit, which explains how the barriers are there to protect protesters as much as the protested. Good to know that in case of that emergency, everybody would be safe, except those beyond the barriers, which means those absolutely on the fringes of the protest (in every possible sense): the vaccine deniers.
“Cheers mate,” says one tall gaunt figure, thrusting a ‘Break Ulez! Break Sadiq Kahn!’ leaflet into my hand. I look up and thank Piers Corbyn before I recognise Piers Corbyn, who is here to “Resist! Defy! Do not comply!”. The reality is that like the rest of the crowd, he’s probably going nowhere and achieving very little.
The rain returns.
There’s a guy dressed as a badger.
I walk past somebody dressed in an inflatable raptor suit that appears to have drooped since it got wet. Some more guys are dressed as big Tory figures: Sunak, Churchill, Hunt, Gove, Anderson, and Truss. I assume they’re all guys. The one dressed as Liz Truss has visibly hairy legs beneath their tights. Bray had been particularly excited about the one resembling Lee Anderson. He later circulates a picture via Twitter of him posing with a fist flying towards Anderson’s big papier–mâché chin.
But I’m distracted now by the only person I’ve seen visibly angry. A guy is screaming the question “If Starmer is the answer, then what’s the question?” Nobody is sure what point he’s making so nobody answers. A policeman looks on quizzically. I mirror the policeman’s look. The anger appears misplaced.
And that’s what’s most striking. It’s the subdued nature of all of this. Perhaps Bray has a point when he complains about the new powers the police have to seize his amplifiers and push him to the margins. God knows, I hate loud noise more than most; detest the way muzak pollutes the public space. I know I’d change my tune if I had to listen to the Benny Hill tune more than once a week, let alone projected through the walls of the Reading Room in Manchester’s Central Library. That booming echoing hall is perfect when I go there to write. It would not be so perfect if Bray was outside Yakety Saxing it from sunrise to sunset.
But perhaps protests are meant to be annoying. Aren’t they meant to be disruptive on some level? Is this what politics feels like when apathy is enforced through legislation?
It’s a hard question and I don’t have an answer. That’s not to say that the egg hurling of past years is to be welcomed, the ugly scenes that Boris Johnson would turn to his advantage at past conferences when he talked about “Trots and militants with vested interests — and indeed interesting vests”. Absolutely nobody wants violence.
Yet something is missing. It’s a sense that neither politics nor protest matters. The two worlds are now kept so far apart that Westminster-in-Manchester feels as far away as Westminster-in-London. Even further, perhaps, now that HS2 has been canned.
Steve Bray in London might be a noisy nuisance but he’s a relevant nuisance. Up here in Manchester, he’s an irrelevance. Like we are all an irrelevance. Just people living in a place at the end of a railway line that few in Westminster really wanted to build in the first place.
@DavidWaywell
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