Can you imagine being a Labour press officer sitting in the Midland Hotel on Tuesday night?
All the planning, the weeks of prep, the focus groups…culminating in a range of headlines that recounted that your ultimate boss had just forgotten the two segments of the speech he least could afford to forget, that your Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary couldn’t remember how much the basic state pension is and Chuka Umunna couldn’t recall the name of more than two people in the Scottish Labour Party.
The most commonly heard phrase amongst conference attendees was "it's a bit flat" and in many ways it was. The final conference before a GE always has a lot of pressure to send the troops out with a spring in their step but the majority of MPs and their staff were still pretty worn out from the Scottish referendum and had arrived in Manchester to see the Party struggling to find a passable response to the English Votes question. For a Party that in the past has done a good job of setting the agenda from its conference activity this was understandably unsettling.
That is not to say the conference didn't have good content - fringes were dominated by meaty issues of housing, energy, infrastructure, health, education, rail and there was lots of decent policy being debated. However, this counts for little if you can't get your core message out beyond the conference centre and hotel.
If a lack of zip characterised much of conference the area that bucked the trend was London. Labour London Mayoral nomination ops were in full swing with the candidates (both declared and those "seriously thinking about it") racking up fringe appearances, taking meetings and generally being visible. It is this contest that for some in the Party offers a glimmer of hope - a contest that the Party should win and where a number of the candidates are plausible when envisaged in the job - and with key sectors of the economy influenced by the position it’s a contest that business and their attendant PA advisors are taking an interest in too.
The final thought on the week is that the traditional convention of letting the parties enjoy their moment in the sun during their conference week was tested in a way I've not seen before largely because international issues keep arising that demand a response. The Labour conference saw the PM bestriding the international scene on issues like climate change and dealing with ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the UKIP conference today is at the same time as a recalled Parliament votes in air strikes in Iraq.
It poses a challenge for all parties in that victory in this period is largely about who can dictate the battlefield on which the election will be fought and won - Labour trying to make it about the NHS and cost-of-living, Conservatives about economic growth and welfare etc... - but the process keeps being side-tracked by international issues that cannot be ignored.
PS - a glimpse of the inside of a Twitter Storm
It’s not often that you hear your name being repeated during a Leader’s speech and in response I quipped on Twitter during Ed Miliband's speech: "So embarrassing. I only spoke to him for two minutes and he has mentioned me three times."
What then happened over the following two minutes was Louise Mensch and Guido Fawkes retweeting and then 180-odd people doing the same within a minute. Triggering follows from political editors from ITV, BBC etc...
I was forced into clarifying that I wasn't in fact "the" Gareth and that I wanted a free owl so they left me alone but I got an unsettling glimpse of what it might be like to be in the eye of a Twitter storm and it isn’t something I’d be keen to experience again!