[Blogs] Some random thoughts on the Compass Conference

2006-06-24T16:12:48-05:00

Last weekend some friends and I made the trip down to London to attend the Compass conference. Compass is, broadly speaking, a left of centre, membership based think tank. The panels and speakers included some of the usual Labour events/media whores - Oona King, Stephen Twigg(who should start chewing gum or using breath mints or something ASAP), John Kampfner et al, but actually produced some interesting discussion and debate. Unfortunately, the shebang started late and carried on running late, this combined with drinking till 3 in the morning and having to catch the train at seven meant I was in pretty rough shape and completely unprepared for the dreariness of the opening speakers. All of them were spot on in their message- Labour has done some great things(usual clatrap on minimum wage, child poverty etc), but should of gone farther. Derek Simpson(Amicus Secretary, or whatever they call their head honcho) called for Blair to be gone as quickly as possible and called for a switch towards more Warwick style policies, which obviously went down well with the audience. My only gripe, and this is a pretty big one for a person needing stimulation to keep him awake after a bad Southern Comfort hangover, is that Neal Lawson and Simpson are probably the worst speakers I have heard , bad students hacks and the annoying man at everyone's CLP who has a single issue obsession are probably more engaging speakers. Simpson kept on pausing during his speech, usually a very effective technique if one pauses at appropriate moments- Blair style, but when you just randomly pause it gives the impression you're either a moron or so fat you're constantly out of breath.

The overall consensus of the people at the conference, although it was never elucidated in this manner, was that whilst the Labour party should always be aiming for the centre ground to ensure power, it should also be moving to win the arguments and force the middle ground to move to the left. Some guy from The Independent made the point well, he argued that we should not be content to talk of the tax "burden", we need to change the language and terms of the debate to match a left of centre perspective. The right does this amazingly well- consider the "right to life" and how tax cuts always comes down to the pie growing larger and everyone's absolute amount increasing(bollocks- but convincing to someone not really thinking).

One final rant. Does anyone else think Denis MacShane is the most obnoxious cock to grace the planet? He delivered a speech in favour of nuclear power which completely failed to address the issues at hand- we all know it doesn't produce greenhouse gases, it was the economic feasibility and nuclear waste the other speaker was objecting to, you idiot. However, the real reason he got my blood boiling was how, when he was sitting in the audience of some event later he kept on talking loudly into his mobile phone in the worst "Yeah, I'm at the Compass conference" style. This despite everyone around him staring daggers and him being politely asked to refrain by one of my friends whom he completely ignored.

The day was interesting in parts, but on the whole very samey- most of the time you always knew what everyone was going to say. The coverage in the media also seemed to be too keen to portray it as a bunch of lefty nutters looking for trouble with Blair. The BBC Website coverage gave the impression that random questions from the floor were serious policies Compass were expounding, e.g. scrapping the Monarchy. In the end we left before the end to an air conditioned bar in Covent Garden to start the real political discourse and escape the boring, unthinkingness of Kitty Usher types.

PS. Excuse the rantiness of this post, its more just to get a bit of discussion going!

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[Blogs] Some random thoughts on the Compass Conference