Off to Manchester for the pre wake wake.......

Last year I attended the Labour Party Conference for the first time. Gordy was riding high, a few good weeks, the party was visibly energised. This year??? I am getting ready to take the train this afternoon and find out. There is a part of me that thinks, yes, the Iraqi chickens are coming home to roost.........



.....but, I can't deny that I have a feeling of a rising sense of panic contemplating the reality of another Tory government, above all it's the smugness I can't abide, even displayed by Andrew Mitchell (someone I actually have some respect for) yesterday on Any Questions. Suggesting the Lib Dems were stealing Tory clothes on tax..........and CLIMATE CHANGE! There is front and front and this takes the biscuit, it wouldn't be so bad if you could actually find any policy on the Tory website, or any reference to the work of Zac Goldsmith et al........hmmmm. As Simon Hughes so rightly observed, Cameron is not a salesman he is a conman..........giving a new meaning to the concept of the King's new clothes. He has listened and learned well from Tony Blair, where is the integrity, where is the sense of any serious attempt to develop meaningful policies? As I observed at conference, he is rather like the guy beautifully kitted out in riding boots, jodhpurs, hunting jacket, hardhat and of course, being a Tory, crop - telling Gordon Brown (on a horse that is too big for him and is bolting, whilst the world watches wondering if he will fall off of his own accord or be bucked off), what he is doing wrong, having never ridden in his life and having no intention to get on the horse until he has to. No doubt then (after the election) we will all discover just how bad a rider he is, but of course then it will be far too late.

So, as I head off to Manchester I find myself in a huge dilemma. I can't abide what Labour has done to this country, to our standing in the world, and to Iraq, but I worry that the Tories will make it worse. I can remember the sense of real elation in 1997, it felt like being let out of a prison. Now the prospect is moving from what has become the new prison back to the redecorated old one.