Slide

Prologue
The voice on the radio said Israel had launched an attack on a base deep inside Syrian territory. There were no more details. Nothing about the time, methods. What was hit, if anyone was killed. It was 11am and no one knew anything. I knew only enough to feel light-headed with worry.

I really had something else on my mind. I was trying to work out if I was in love with a girl I know and had seen again for the first time in a long time, beautiful and honest in a red dress. But there´s no place for those thoughts.
Things that were already worse just took a turn for the worse. We are all headfirst on the downslope and it´s getting steeper.

Slide
I thought ´the war is on´ and drove home to see what CNN and the BBC had to say. To get some idea of how hard and fast this was going to come. But few details there either, just matter-of-fact reports that it was a ´terrorist´ training camp destroyed, that Israel had the right to defend itself. Reminders of the previous night´s mass murder by a suicide bomber. I watched for a while but soon realised I was learning nothing.

I spoke to a police officer who said they were told by anti-terrorist special branch officers that the families of Palestinian militants were paid $1million by Saddam Hussein as a way of encouraging attacks on Israel. I knew the numbers were wrong but I didn´t argue with him. He´s a heavy drinker and I didn´t want to waste my time and end up in a fight I´d lose. I wandered off.

And then I was on the road, driving north for hours to Blackpool and the hotel room that will be my home for the next week. For the Tory party conference.

Five hours on the road. A stop on the motorway services and an uncomfortable hour of sleep in the afternoon, curled up in the warmth of the car. Outside, this raining autumn day, breath condensing in the air. Dark when I arrived in town, to be hit by a foul wind coming straight in off the Irish Sea.

There was nothing else to do but sit around and talk to other journalists about politics. The kind of introverted discussion that quickly reached a conclusion that the Conservative party is routed, doomed and failing ever more deeply. Iain Duncan Smith a mockery, hollow and fragile. But no one else there to replace him even though the party knows he is condemning them to the wilderness.

Iain Duncan Smith, a man so right wing even the dominantly right-wing British public can´t stand him.

Besides, the Labour government has made moderate conservatism its own. The actual Conservative party rendered obsolete.

The polls said it clearly. As the conference opened, with Duncan Smith voicing absurdities like "we´re heading for government", Sky news showed 14 per cent of their survey group thought he´d make the best PM. Blair was rated top by 35 per cent. But the real nightmare for the Tories; Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, was thought best by 22 per cent.

That morning´s Independent newspaper carried a front page poll; results indicating a majority now saw the Lib Dems as the main opposition to Labour.

I muttered to one Westminster hack - one of the genuine reporters with an interest in what is actually happening rather than meeting his masters´ agenda - about the Conservatives being nothing more than a regional pressure group, rather than a national political party. I think Blair said something like that the week before. Anyway, the hack agreed.

Sunday, and Robin Cook´s diary appeared in the Times. Revelations that Tony Blair knew Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. Knew it posed no threat to British interests but carried on all the same with the war.

Claims the Prime Minister misled parliament - among the most serious charges you can level at a PM and certainly a resignation matter - by not admitting all he knew.

Another heavy blow to a government that should have lost every shred of credibility over its conduct. Over the lies and the almighty mess that is getting ever messier in the Middle East.

But Sky News poll said it clearly: Iraq is the most important political issue to five per cent of voters. 57 per cent say Iain Duncan Smith is not the best person to lead the Tories. Only 15 per cent say the Tories are in a better state than they were in 1997 when they were swamped in an historic and unexpected Labour landslide.

Epilogue
The wind is so strong it´s hard to walk. The most powerful storm I remember. I mentioned it to the night watchman at the hotel. "It´s always like this in the autumn. And it is conference. It´s always like this at conference. It´ll get worse."

I realised then that God is merciful. Politicians in town, politicians certainly among the worst in the country. And He had thrown up a storm to meet them. Cruel seas, stinging rain, battering wind.

But it could have been so much worse. A just God, a God of vengeance would have waited for everyone to arrive, and destroyed the whole fucking town in a hail of fire and venom.

And then He would have rested, happy in His work.