Party conferences are all that is wrong with politics

What happens at a party conference that can’t happen in real life? I often wonder. I’ve been to loads of the damn things, so you might think that, by now, I would have an inkling.

In the olden days, I used to think the conferences were for the delegates. They work hard all year on their weird hobby: politics. Why should they not get a few days by the seaside? They deserve a hotel, a fling, a dance on a sticky carpet in the name of making the world a better place . Yet, apart from Brighton (London by the Sea), the seaside towns don’t have what slick party machines need any more. The conference halls are not big enough, the accommodation is too smelly and the food isn’t what many of our MPs have come to expect.

So Blackpool was done for years ago, which tells you everything you need to know about how the Westminster-centric world works. It was simply beyond the pale to change trains at Preston, stay somewhere that wasn’t a boutique hotel and dine on lovely carbs.

I am no better or worse when it comes to this. I was in Blackpool in 2007 when David Cameron made the “look no notes” speech that propelled him to the Tory leadership, but I spent most of that time in TK Maxx. Sort of hiding. Never quite knowing what to do.

Related: Labour conference and Brexit: how will the vote play out?

Obviously, once you leave the conference centre, most people in whatever city you are in do not know the conference is going on, or what it is for. My reasoning is that I may as well lurk around shopping centres because, at an event where every journalist is looking for “news”, the likelihood of there being any is extremely remote. Now, even more so. Every snitch of gossip is tweeted out: this weekend it was Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, shouting at the Momentum founder Jon Lansman that he was “the hitman that missed”, after his failed attempt to oust Watson.

The big story of Jeremy Corbyn’s loss of control over his own party, the war going on between his inner circle and er … everyone else, is utterly depressing. Conference is now squeezing spots in public.

If you like, you can blame the media for this, but the fact is that the splits in our main parties are not media inventions. You might have thought that what with all the current proroguery, this peculiar relocation of politicians and hacks would be suspended, but conference is about money, subsidies and funding. Good old face-to-face interaction is necessary in a digital era, but as the party system is in collapse then it has to be said that the three weeks of conference season are not fit for purpose.

Now it all exists to be televised and speeches are given in half-empty halls while mediocre offerings from any dear leader are given compulsory ovations. The disconnect between representative democracy as it should be and this facade is on full display at these rallies.

If you want to know which way the wind is blowing then look at the stalls and sponsorship and where the money moves to. Look at the cut of the suits. Then wander outside and away.

It is really not enough to say, well, the country is deeply divided on Brexit and conference simply reflects those divisions. Conference is actually part of that division and has been for years. I don’t know how anyone can attend these events and think otherwise. The Labour MP Jess Phillips recently described it all as “a massive waste of time … I have no idea why we do it.”

Some pretend it is where new thinking can be found. Really? Truth is, it can be fun – after all, who can resist a glass of something, an egg sandwich and a great discussion of how awful everyone else is? Not me.

But don’t mistake it for the main story, whatever the media tell you. Conference is all that is wrong with Westminster, simply relocated. It is sometimes said of alcoholics who pretend they are solving their problems by going to live elsewhere that they are “doing a geographical”. Instead, of course, they continue the same behaviour in a different environment. In this case with free wine.