Why don't the Tories hold a conference in France seriously?

MATTHEW PARRIS

Aa seaside resort, Dinard is what Brighton ought to be. Why don't the Tories hold a conference there?

Just over the Rance river from St Malo on the Atlantic coast of France, the one-time fishing village was discovered by English tourists in the 19th century, and to them more than anyone its subsequent fashionability as a resort was owed. Dinard feels a little old-fashioned now, but in a pleasant, almost stately way. The town is beautifully situated by the Brittany seaside. It has orderliness and grace. It has fine facilities — including conference facilities — many hotels and even a casino. It has good French restaurants and pretty countryside all around.

I happened to pass through Dinard the other day on my way back from supper in France. You raise an eyebrow, but I embroider only slightly. One really can visit France to dine these days. I did because a gathering of friends had been arranged: a reunion of half-a-dozen of my French former comrades on the island of Kerguelen, a sub-antarctic archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean where I over-wintered for four months in 2000 at the scientific base that France keeps there. I was keen to see them again.

Taking sleeping bags (from the Chatsworth Farm Shop I brought a Hartington Stilton and a Somerset Royal cider brandy, too), we had all arranged to meet late Saturday afternoon at a country cottage near a town called Callac. I found that you could fly from Stansted to Brest for about the price of a railway ticket to Manchester; and a friend collected me from the tiny airport after lunch. The evening in Callac was spent over a barbecue and wine, and much reminiscence. Next morning we breakfasted until lunch, and I flew back from Dinard to Stansted that afternoon. The flight, equally cheap, took 55 minutes, but had I had more time I could have sailed: regular overnight and daytime ferries (about eight hours) ply between Portsmouth and St Malo.

I noticed how agreeable and well run Dinard looked, and it was then that it struck me, at first capriciously, that there is no modern reason why a political party should stick, as the Tories do, to England for their conferences.

The more you think about it, the less crazy it seems. Let me start with the political reasoning, then say something about the practicalities.

The Tories are making quiet progress. Many, including me, feared that under lain Duncan Smith they might lurch into extremism, but instead they are tiptoeing back to sanity and, equally important, the appearance of sanity.

There is still a good way to tiptoe. By the time our latest leader was elected, elements in the Conservative party had begun to look crudely xenophobic. Mr Duncan Smith's own powerful distrust of Brussels had seemed at times obsessive. It threatened to define him and tar his party with the brush of fanaticism.

The problem was not so much the party's European policies, which were vague, but the fervour with which they prosecuted their Eurosceptic cause. Euroscepticism bordered on Europhobia, and the party's official message — Brussels-doubting rather than Europe-hating — was in danger of being drowned out. When Duncan Smith first protested that he respected our European allies and thought we had much to learn from them, he was not widely believed. This sounded like the kind of thing you say before you put the boot in.

But the boot has been restrained. Duncan Smith has kept faith with his insistence that the Tories should approach European questions constructively, and he really does seem interested in Continental European approaches towards (for instance) health and pensions provision. In the public mind he has begun to make headway with the argument that to be negative about the euro is perfectly compatible with being positive about Europe. This strengthens rather than weakens the No campaign because it suggests that the doubts are based on practicalities rather than prejudice. It strengthens the Tories, too, because it suggests that they are not madly anti, just sensibly concerned.

To choose to hold a party conference on the continent of Europe would be a spectacular living demonstration of the Tories' goodwill towards our European neighbours; of our appreciation of their strengths; and of our determination that nobody should confuse a practical doubt about a particular EU project, with xenophobia. We have looked in danger of being captured by a single policy. With one imaginative bound, yet with no change to the policy, we could be free.

So why not France? Our sweet enemy (as Sir Philip Sidney put it half a millennium ago) is a civilised and beautiful country, appreciated especially by those Englishmen and Englishwomen of a (lower-case c) conservative disposition, the kind who used to drive Montegos. It is much the favourite holiday destination of a certain type of discerning Tory. A place like Dinard — in fact quite English in an old-fashioned 'Grand Tour' way — would be a very Tory choice; arguably more so than Blackpool. And at a stroke it would make a political point more vividly than a thousand speeches could.

Now to the practicalities, into which I have not looked deep, offering Dinard only as an example of the kind of place which might suit. There may be better candidates in France, but let us take Dinard as a case in point. With St Malo nearby, I doubt there would be a problem with hotel, flatlet and bed-and-breakfast accommodation. October is low season, so availability should be good and prices competitive, and it would surprise me if local costs were higher than those of (say) Bournemouth. I have not established that the conference facilities, and the necessary security, would be adequate, but the research would be worth doing. They are used to the well-mannered kind of English person in Dinard, so language would not be too much of a problem, and the food would be incomparably better than Blackpool.

As for travel, remember that for most party conference-goers the occasion is also a mini-holiday before winter, and many would go on to spend a few days touring. Trains to Blackpool are appalling and costly, while Dinard is closer to London than is the north of England. No doubt the lowcost regional airlines like Ryanair would do a special deal for Tory representatives, or the party could charter and make a profit. Some would drive round by way of Calais; others would take cabins on the overnight ferry to St Maio from Portsmouth, while the younger section would sleep on the cheaper couchettes and spend what they saved at the ship's bar.

It would be fun for everybody. The event would be a media-sensation and a knockout punch at the party's sad Little Englander reputation.

I started this article in whimsical vein. I finish it — persuaded by my own argument — in all seriousness. Why not give it a try, you old fuddy-duddies at Central Office?

Matthew Parris is a political columnist of the Times.