After nearly two years, this week I finally attended my first Conservative Party Conference as an MP.
Whilst I’ve been to conferences before, it’s certainly a different experience as an MP.
Conferences are a great time to debate policy with other activists and members and for many of us it also gives us an opportunity to speak on subjects that we are passionate about.
In my case I spoke on a number of panels, including one on taxation hosted by the Taxpayers’ Alliance and the Institute of Economic Affairs, a panel discussing plastic waste and another on education, which gave me an opportunity to also share my experiences as a former teacher.
There are also some fun parts, as you’d expect.
It’s an opportunity to meet old friends and also to network with journalists, think tanks, charities and politicians from other countries.
I even managed a spot of karaoke, although whether I was wise to perform Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice or not is another question.
I’ll blame that one on a TV channel’s chief political correspondent who managed to request Sweet Caroline before I had the chance!
This was still less painful than the 4-0 defeat we suffered at the MPs v The Lobby football match at Manchester City - it took my body two days to recover. But conferences are also a great opportunity to showcase policies and plans for the future. One of the main phrases we have heard so much has been Build Back Better, but another has been Getting On With The Job.
For me, this is the key thing now. Much has been made of the £407 billion spent during Covid and now we must focus on getting our economy back on track. We’ve had some very encouraging growth figures and coming out of restrictions in July has given us a head start over many others.
I was sat in the auditorium for the Prime Minister’s speech and there was the usual wit and humour you’d expect. But what I liked the most was not the entertainment, but the message on levelling up. Put simply, ability and talent is distributed evenly across the country, but opportunity is not.
That’s something we want to change and in communities such as Bassetlaw is the kind of thing we have been talking about for a long time. Being positive is vital to any community, but we also need to see policies and action to achieve this. For me, party conference was a perfect opportunity to discuss precisely how we do just that.
Now is the time for Getting On With The Job.
