Manufactured ovations to parts of Cameron’s speech and interviewees practically reading off their hands to emphasise how great Dave is on poverty and ‘our boys’ in Afghanistan weren’t fooling anyone. The Tories are still the Tories. They admitted as much – public sector pay freezes, pulling people off incapacity benefit, ‘discipline’ in schools, workhouses for teen mothers…the list goes on. They seemed to like Manchester though, and the city council’s Chief Executive and conference host, Sir Howard Bernstein, is apparently to be given a peerage. There were others paying a little more attention too. Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce for one…

For whole post, see  http://themule.info/article/lobbying-at-the-tory-conference