Economy must take centre stage for Tory conference

Cruel and uncalled for as that may be, if there's a sliver of truth in it then the party conference season must be the equivalent of the V Festival.

It's Birmingham's turn to host the Tories again from tomorrow with the promise of a £17 million boost for the economy as a result.

This, if anything, is the big one.

Here's the senior party in Government, rallying its troops en masse for the final big autumn gathering before the General Election.

'Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government,' said no-one who ever actually made it in to government (it was David Steel in 1981).

So the conference needs to be a carefully worded plea to the electorate as well as a way to unite the party.

Ed Miliband's speech to the Labour conference in Manchester was certainly not his finest hour.

Forgetting to mention the deficit and immigration - two of the reasons voters turned against the party in 2010 - was a serious gaffe.

Labour may be ahead in the opinion polls but typically that gap narrows the closer we get to General Elections as voters opt for the status quo.

None of this gives David Cameron room for complacency.

He faces the fight of his life to stay in power and the West Midlands is going to be essential.

Labour seats in the Black Country and Staffordshire fell to the Tories in 2010 but the political map looks very different today.

For a start, Cannock Chase and Dudley South will both get a new MP regardless of who wins. Aidan Burley and Chris Kelly, two of the 2010 intake, are standing down.

Their replacements as candidates do not have the benefit of incumbency. Nor will they have had much time to get to know their constituencies.

Then there is the 'grass roots' support.

When David Cameron came to power, three out of the four Black Country councils were controlled by the Tories.

Now they're all Labour again. And in Sandwell there is just a single Conservative councillor.

Don't forget UKIP either. In Cannock Chase, the Tories are third behind them.

In opposition in councils, the Tories don't have a record to stand by, for better or worse.

Labour, however, is making cuts it says go against the very reason many of its councillors went into public service but get to blame everything on the Government.

The Labour conference saw Mr Miliband paint the governing parties as out of touch, toffee-nosed and uncaring.

His pledge to pump more money into the NHS by taxing people who live in 'mansions' might well have appealed to his core voters. But the £2.5bn he plans to pump in won't go very far.

Balancing the books might ultimately be the Chancellor's job rather than the leader's but the lack of mention for the deficit was an open goal for the Conservatives who have spent their entire term in office blaming the previous administration for the country's financial woes.

There will be pledges, promises and policies that come out of Tory party conference, all of which will be aimed at getting us to see the Conservatives as safe pairs of hands.

The one they'll want us to remember may as well be borrowed from Bill Clinton's campaign: "It's the economy, stupid."