On paper, the traditional role of the journalist at a British party conference boils down to some simple questions: what was the mood of the assembled activists? Did the leader give a good speech? In practice, the changing nature of conferences and the media makes this superficially simple task more complicated than it may initially appear.

Any journalist covering the leader’s speech, for instance, will have watched it in full. But it will reach the vast majority of its intended audience in fragmentary form, through clips – and speeches are increasingly written with that reality in mind. The conference hall is not really the audience, or the full speech really the product. This adds a layer of complexity to the reviewer’s task.

Likewise, it is less meaningful than once it was to talk about the mood of the conference. Thirty years ago, when our political parties were much more robust social institutions than they are today, millions of Britons were party members through thick and thin, and thousands attended annual conference whether they liked the leadership or not.

It was this democratic culture that gave us the spectacular showdowns at Labour conferences in the 1980s, or Tory activists cheering Norman Tebbit’s excoriation of the European Union in the 1990s. But it is unthinkable now: most people disaffected with a party – especially the Conservatives – are simply not members of it; they certainly don’t take time off work........

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