Camden Conservatives assemble in Broad Street

AFTER suffering near wipeout losses at May’s council elections, perhaps it was not a surprise that for the first time since the Camden conference tradition of a “team photo” began many years ago, there was not a single councillor in the line-up this week.

In fact, you have to credit the party with some smart creativity and clever WhatsApp organisation to fill the pavement in Birmingham’s Broad Street as they did (above). For full disclosure to the train spotters who count the numbers as a show of strength or weakness, this was snapped just after a security scare which saw anybody at the conference locked behind the gates for at least an hour.

The north London Tories are still around though, still there – still thinking that there are simply highs and lows in politics to endure. Losing control of neighbouring Westminster and Barnet councils was, of course, a considerable low but deserters are thin on the ground.

That all said you couldn’t help wonder at this conference whether the loyal members who do make the effort to come up, perhaps taking time off work and paying the expensive hotel bills, deserve a little better from their leadership.

They can agree or disagree on elements of policy with their national counterparts, or like or dislike individual personalities, but the Hampstead Tories might wish that successive Conservative prime ministers would stop using the words “north” and “London” together like they are dirty swear words.

As David Cameron and Boris Johnson had done before, new prime minister Liz Truss used the area – their home – pretty much as a slur during her keynote speech yesterday (Wednesday). “They taxi from north London townhouses to the BBC studio to dismiss anyone challenging the status quo,” she said of opponents questioning her economic plans.

Maybe everybody loves a regional cliché but there are people who are really poor here too… and, besides, don’t tell us nobody at all has ever eaten avocado or drunk a latte in Leeds, where she has reminded us a million times she grew up. That’s a geographical posting held up as emblem of being a no-nonsense straight talker from Yorkshire who does what she says and says what she means.

Unless, she has to do a u-turn on a policy that she was backing to the hilt just hours earlier.

As it happens, plenty of Conservatives live in north London “townhouses” and don’t feel this makes their views invalid. Several of them are among her own MPs.

Truth is, the local rank-and-file members have soldiered on against a Labour juggernaut for so long in Camden now and usually have a clearer and more compassionate view of what our borough is really like than Tory HQ or those brave knights of the never-ending culture wars.

Maybe they can tell her that “north London” isn’t to blame for everything.