Two Down, Two to Go

Last night the TRG hosted two events, back to back. First off, Lord Hurd introduced his new biography of Robert Peel. He made the case for Peel as the first man to really deliver on the idea of One Nation. Disraeli may have had the finer way with works but it was Peel that delivered on them, not least by cutting tariffs on corn, timber and other basic goods, so that the masses could afford bread and other basic necessities more easily.

Lord Hurd’s address was followed by a book-signing and judging by the faces on the Politico’s staff, they managed to sell a good few copies, too!

We moved smoothly (!) from book-signing to the TRG-Mainstream reception. This was another well attended event with plenty of MP’s, MEP’s, businessmen, academics and ordinary memebers in attendence. The guest of honour was Oliver Letwin MP and Damian Green hosted the event. Oliver offered some insights into the policy announcements we can expect to hear this week. This is a crucial time for policies in the party and we will have to wait to see how this plays out.

It was also a joy, given previous experiences of recent years, to see that there were only a few people still in need of passes on the first night. The organisation of this conference does seem to have moved on somewhat, which is certainly welcome!

Thanks, as ever, to Clare and Tim C for putting these together. This was a good start for TRG@Conference 2007!

One final note… It looks like posts sent from my phone have slightly different formatting to the normal ones. Apologies for that. We will tidy those up when we can.