Star turns fail to dispel general air of tat and decline

We do try to avoid the obvious jokes round here but, honestly, what can you do? Here we have a once-mighty national institution, now ageing, faded, failing and palpably close to despair. That's Blackpool. And suddenly the Conservative party marches in.

First, David Cameron took his guest star, Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York, on a tour of the seafront. As he observed the general air of tat and decline, Mr Bloomberg might have got an inkling of what was to follow.

The conference started with the sound system breaking down. It could only happen to the Tories. Simon Mort, the chairman, continued regardless, plaintively explaining: "I am enjoined to carry on so they can adjust the sound."

Only a Conservative chairman would use the word "enjoin".

Then there was the matter of Theresa May's boots. The shadow leader of the Commons was supposed to be introducing "innovative social action initiatives". But it wasn't easy to concentrate, because she was wearing the most extraordinary pair of wellies: rubber boots with both a leopard motif and leopardskin design, worn - one could not help noticing - below a decidedly flouncy and chiffony black skirt.

She explained eventually that she was going to wear them for the party's own conference week social action initiative (ie a political stunt that's supposed not to look like a stunt), which involves creating a garden. Is she really going digging in those boots? It is difficult to express this delicately, but ladies who walk round Blackpool dressed like that are not immediately assumed to be out gardening.

One hopes Mr Bloomberg, whose city - as he explained - is now very prim and clean, missed that bit. He was at best third choice for this job, performed last year by John McCain, the US senator. Rudy Giuliani said no; Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California was meant to come then cried off, though he appeared by video link, looking these days rather like a bulked-up Ronald Reagan.

The technology actually worked, to general surprise. The governor used the word "fantastic" a lot, but spoke only briefly, perhaps to conserve party funds. Mr Bloomberg promised he would be brief, too, which is usually a bad sign. He started rather deftly, then launched into a long riff about how wonderful and successful a mayor he was. He was supposed to say how wonderful and successful David Cameron is, but he never mentioned that. Perhaps he hadn't forgiven him for being dragged to Blackpool.

Through it all, one sensed a pervasive sadness. Some of it came from the place. Blackpool is no longer charmingly seedy, it is shabby and rundown: I counted six charity shops within 50 yards of the Winter Gardens. In a well-run country the political parties would be vying to regenerate it: in Britain they run away. This will almost certainly be the last big political conference ever held here: next year the Tories prefer the canal breezes of Birmingham.

But most of the mood came from the party's own sense of helplessness as the Brownite express hurtles towards them. And yet that may well make for a far more vigorous few days than the self-congratulatory and intellectually vapid week that Labour produced.

There has already been Michael Heseltine. He was a visitor from a much more distant land than America: Britain as it was before 1997, when the Conservatives ran the place, seemingly for ever. Hezza spoke elegaically, with a hint of bitterness about the state of the inner cities and the urgent need to encourage local democracy. Of course, opposition parties always love local democracy - it never survives a spell in power. But his speech hinted at fresh thinking, unlike anything in Bournemouth.

And later there was Boris Johnson, who made a barnstorming speech to introduce his campaign for the London mayoralty and was received with the rapture Lord Heseltine used to attract from conference in his pomp. Mr Johnson got a standing ovation before he started and a louder one when he sat down. He deserved it too: amid the jokes, there was actually a hint of serious intent.

Mayor Bloomberg looked on inscrutably.