After conference, what next?

Conference season is over for another year. Journalists can go home, see their families and do their washing. Politicians can stop pretending they have any affection for various cities across the UK and that they are enjoying themselves.

Overall the party hierarchies will be happy, I think. Jeremy Corbyn roused the crowd and convinced them he’s about to be Prime Minister. Theresa May managed to deliver a generally well-received speech without interruption or a collapsing set, and the Dancing Queen stunt seems to have largely gone down well.

Some people even noticed that the Liberal Democrats still exist.

Delivering on the conference rhetoric

The conference is the easy bit though. Politicians are speaking to the true believers and can basically guarantee media coverage. Now they have to deliver on what was said on the conference platform and appeal to the wider country.

For the Conservatives, this means not only showing they can manage Brexit but that they have a real, radical, domestic offer that goes beyond that.

May announced a lifting of the cap on council borrowing for housing. Now we need to see her government delivering real reform and boosts to the housing industry so young people can own their home. The Government needs to take action to deal with the exploitation that takes place in the private rented sector. She also made strong promises on Cancer, but can her Government do what is required to avoid a winter NHS crisis?

We need to see her government can do something apart from Brexit and banning things.

The Labour leadership is clearly deadly serious about being in Government. They think their time is now. So they must prove they are not a risk to national security, that they can be trusted with the economy, that Jews do not need to keep having conversations about where we are going to go if Corbyn wins. They need policies that appeal to middle England as much as Momentum activists and have a firm stance on Brexit instead of the of the fudge that currently exists.

Conference can be like doing a reset, and our politics has never needed someone to hit CTL-ALT-DEL more badly. Let’s see if our politicians can rise to the moment.

My first book "Not Buying It", looking at post-truth in media and politics, is being published by Unbound

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