After a long, drawn-out Christmas season of drinks parties followed by illness, many from wonk world will have stumbled into the new year in recovery mode. Not so for the Fabians in Dartmouth Street, where the new year brings its high-profile annual conference, a key fixture in the calendar of any self-respecting Labour suburbanite.
While last year’s conference keynote was the then PM-in-waiting, this year it was the turn of the foreign secretary to top the conference’s bill, themed around the subject of foreign policy. Never has a main hall paid host to so many thermos flasks and homemade sandwiches as over 700 of the Fabian faithful sat down to listen to David Miliband. How things have changed since last year’s conference when the then environment secretary could be seen wandering in, newspapers in hand, clad in jeans and a shirt and chatting leisurely with friends.
In his speech Miliband predicted that a ‘civilian surge’ would reshape global politics in the coming years and called on Britain to become a ‘global hub’ to mediate fundamental shifts of power from the west to the east.
During the Q&A session he did an admirable job of fending off attacks from an assortment of radicals. These included one campaigner who accused the government of having embarked on five illegal wars, another who implied the government was supporting the oppression of Columbian dissidents and none less than environmental activist Mayer Hillman, who wondered why politicians paid more heed to people’s democratic rights than the survival of the planet. You could have forgiven Miliband for longing for the days when the hot topic of conversation was farming.
However, the questioner who caused most disquiet among conference delegates was a student who chose to illustrate his point about political apathy among the young by noting that there were not many young people in attendance. Fearing that, despite appearances, he might no longer be considered young, Miliband quipped: ‘40 is the new 30,’ before adding: ‘No, actually, 45 is the new 30.’
While the conference is a regular fixture for many progressives, one person who would have been attending this year for the first time was ex-Tory MP Quentin Davies who crossed the floor last summer. In a breakout session Davies told delegates that ministers should be less afraid to talk up the plus points of the Lisbon treaty, rather than harking on about British concessions. The presence of an ex-Tory was impressive, although it was at Progress’ annual conference in November that a real, live, non-defected Tory was let loose to be mauled on the conference floor.
The end of 2007 saw an admirable display of cooperation between left and right as Progress held an event in conjunction with David Cameron’s favourite thinktank, Policy Exchange. In a debate entitled ‘Has Cameron changed the Conservatives for good?’, Progress friends Liam Byrne and David Aaronovitch squared up against shadow education secretary Michael Gove and the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson.
While it was heartening to hear the debate’s chair, Jon Sopel, describe this magazine as ‘pretty decent’, it came as something of a surprise to hear warm words from Gove: ‘nearly every newspaper gave my book Celsius 7/7 a bad review,’ he said. ‘But Progress was one of the few magazines that saw sense.’