This has been a crucial conference season things changed over the past three weeks.
For a start, the figures for lobster consumption in Manchester, where the Conservatives gathered last week, spiked somewhat.
A restaurant near the conference centre was believed to have sold out of the posh nosh while the bar in the conference hotel allegedly ran dry of champagne.
Changed days from the early austerity years when Tories were banned from buying bubbly.
The serious business of party conferences takes place in anonymous conference centres. Speeches are made and the level of actual democracy on show diminishes as the weeks wind on.
The Lib Dems make actual decisions about party policy. So does Labour, but as in the vote to re-nationalise Royal Mail the leadership can immediately overturn the will of delegates.
The Tories don’t even pretend, the purpose of their annual get-together is mainly to have a jolly good time.
All conferences are alike, however, in that the real action takes place in the official conference hotel nearby where gossip is shared, booze consumed and occasionally Ed Balls leads everyone in a sing-song around the grand piano.
The lobby areas of these invariably grand old hotels heave with people late into the night, with the last stragglers staying on for breakfast before going to bed.
Manchester is a particular favourite among hardened conference-goers not just because it’s a nice city with a compact conference area, but because the Metropolitan Hotel sets up lots of temporary bars in the lobby meaning there’s no need to wait ages for a drink. When they’ve been listening to self-congratulatory speeches all day, delegates deserve a drink.
However, this past conference season saw two special speeches.
Ed Miliband’s address to his party conference has only become more significant since the Conservatives were in Manchester as it was the main topic on Tory lips. David Cameron’s speech felt more like a response to the Labour leader than a Prime Minister setting out his programme.
The second significant speech was George Osborne’s last Monday. It was he who set out the Tories’ top line, that they have a “serious plan for a grown-up country”. Though that was rather undermined by a number of series of silly and sappy jokes he dubbed Ed and David Miliband “Cain and not-very-Abel”.
Most important was Osborne’s delivery. The sneer was replaced by seriousness, he came across as calm and confident rather than callow and callous. He was, in short, prime ministerial.
In the wake of his omnishambles budget Osborne appeared irretrievably damaged goods. Now he’s back among the favourites to succeed Cameron when the time comes.
Clapped-out journalists who’ve traipsed around the nation these past three weeks may ask what’s the point of conference season, but no one can deny it has an impact.
Nick Clegg has confirmed his position at the head of the Lib Dems while rival Vince Cable has seen his ambitions extinguished, interestingly in Glasgow where he began his political career as a councillor.
Ed Miliband has brushed aside a summer of criticism to once again pick the political battleground, this time on energy prices.
And George Osborne has come of age, despite having had his hair cut in a weird, apparently youthful, style.
With reshuffles on both sides of the House expected to be completed within days, things will look and feel different when the Commons returns this week.
Be it city break or sun at the seaside, politics and personnel have been refreshed by conference season 2013.
Enjoy the convenience of having The Sunday Post delivered as a digital ePaper straight to your smartphone, tablet or computer.
Subscribe for only £5.49 a month and enjoy all the benefits of the printed paper as a digital replica.
Subscribe