At the start of October, the uber-posh diaries of Smythson of Bond Street – stationer to the Queen and former employer of Sam Cam – announce the beginning of the pheasant shooting season. Strangely, it is silent on the arrival of autumn party conference season and its associated bloodletting, perhaps because the days of fiery speeches denouncing scuttling council workers and lauding fathers on bikes are over. Still, conference season is a big event in the thinktank calendar as they follow the three main parties to the great cities of England.

Each year the tanks often present identical programmes of events to each party conference. A closer read, however, of each week’s timetables reveals telling differences between not-quite-identical triplets. 

Policy Exchange, once called the ‘top Cameroon thinktank’, is just such a case in point. It has teamed up with work programme providers Working Links to hold an oven-ready event in Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, but with subtle adjustments for each occasion. For the Liberal Democrats, the event is entitled Can Coalition Politics Deliver the Rehab Revolution? At Labour conference this morphs into Soft or Smart – Should Labour Back the Rehabilitation Revolution? which perhaps reflects the continuing ambivalence within Labour towards ‘liberal’ solutions for offenders, while the Liberal Democrat title implies the rehab revolution really ought to be well under way by now. For the blue-rinse brigade, though, the event becomes: Gone Soft – What is Behind the Rehabilitation Revolution? For a Tory audience the only way to pull in the crowds may be to dangle the offer of a chance to rail against ‘soft’ solutions.

On the Monday of Tory conference (delegates back from shooting the first pheasant by then), Policy Exchange asks What Can the Conservatives Do for the North? Not a lot would be the churlish answer. Stopping the north going under at a time of austerity would be another, but the following day Policy Exchange and Yorkshire Water will get together to discuss keeping northern heads above water in a different way: Flood Risks and Drained Finances: Funding and Delivering of Flood Defences. Sounds dull, until it’s too late.

The Tory conference schedule of Reform features a string of events that are not taking place elsewhere, and seem to centre on some of the the party’s favourite bugbears: From State Dependency to Personal Responsibility is one, while Unleashing Entrepreneurship: How to Create the Most Enterprising Decade in the UK’s History is another. Whether these topics are thought to be of no interest to the other parties is not clear, but the audience will surely lap it up.

Incidentally, each Friday Reform hands out the entertainingly pithy awards of ‘Reformer of the Week’ and ‘Reactionary of the Week’ to public figures who have in some way satisfied or displeased the tank’s goal of exposing ‘policy failure in relation to public services over a period of years’. Liberal Democrats tend to be awarded the ‘Reactionary of the Week’ title pretty often, with Nick Clegg picking up the gong a couple of times, Shirley Williams too for her opposition to NHS reform. Andrew Lansley has won the ‘Reformer of the Week’ prize. Possibly the only lefties to win the Reformer title were ‘the 155 Greek MPs who voted for austerity measures’. That week’s ‘Reactionaries’ were ‘the 138 Greek MPs who voted against.’

If you can’t bear the thought either of conference season or shooting wild birds, you can always autumn in London town, perhaps attending the Centre for Inquiry UK’s Conspiracy Theory Day. This event explores 9/11, Alien Visitation, Jewish Cabals and Global Warming – Why are People Drawn to Conspiracy Theories, and What Holds them Captive? The tank is holding the event at the South Place Ethical Society’s historic home of Conway Hall, with appearances from Demos researchers among others. The CFI is all about ‘the application of science and reason to questions regarding religion and the supernatural … and political problems’. So what draws party members back to the annual tribal gatherings year after year? The answer is surely something in between reason and religion – perhaps a fringe for CFI to host in autumn 2012.

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Adam Harrison is editorial and website manager at Progress

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Photo: dflorian1980