A Delightful Weekend in the Country

Apologies for the delay in the write up but TB had some serious sleep to catch up on. The last weekend at Wellington College for YBF6 was an extremely sound gathering of some of the brightest minds in the grassroots movement of both today and the next generation. It was a refreshingly honest look at where conservatives in this country really are at. Behind those closed rural doors people were a lot more willing to go off message and be frank about where we are and what still needs to be done. Exactly what the doctor ordered.

TB didn't get down to until Friday afternoon so was rather sore to miss Carswell and Pickles, but delegates were singing their praises. The Eric Forth Memorial Dinner, with speeches from Conor Burns, Jonathon Isaby and Michael Forsyth was a rousing reminder of those pinnacles of the movement, without whom the Conservative Party, and the umbrella group behind it, would be here today. Congratulations again to Emma Carr who won the Forth Memorial Award for activism.

TB was impressed at the commitment to the cause shown by the fact that there was an almost one hundred percent attendance for the 9am start on Saturday morning, despite some attendees having only found their beds a couple of hours before. The story of Smeargate from the horses mouth was clearly worth getting out of bed for. TB's favourite question came from one of the American delegation who at the end of the talk put up their hand to ask, "sorry, what is Smeargate?" Apparently the Derek Draper Downfall video wasn't quite clear enough. Joking apart it was wonderful to have ten or so American attendees from YBF's sister organisation The

Young America's Foundation

. It was nice to catch up with some old faces, and TB will never ever tire of hearing a certain young Texan tell the story of how to fish for "gaiters" with just a chicken and a knife...

Dr John Shosky is one of the most compelling speakers TB has ever seen. He was privileged enough to have extended training with this former Reagan speech write in DC this summer and it was a joy to hear him speak again this weekend. If you ever get a chance to meet him do not miss it. Hannan also fired up the crowd on Saturday lunchtime with a passionate attack on Europe, hitting all the right buttons with the crowd with his almost poetic, devastating deconstruction of the left's attacks on Kaminski. Was lovely to meet Mrs Hannan and have a good chat with the two of them over lunch. Peter Botting's speech and image training was a highlight of afternoon, having heard so many great speakers, some tips and advice on how to pull it off yourself was appreciated by the crowd. TB missed the ultrasound Douglas Murray as he had to sneak off to write his own speech. Dammit.

The Margaret Thatcher Banquet on Saturday night was always going to be tough crowd. TB had the pleasure of introducing Iain Dale and was mightily chuffed with the crowds reaction to his own speech. It was hilarious that those Gordon jokes were meant to be horrendous yet the booze soaked crowd didn't seem to care! TB had seen Mr Dale appear on various panels before but this was the first time he had heard him speaking. He has an impressive command of a crowd and an excellent ability to weave humour and serious points together in away that leaves you chuckling and then suddenly thinking, actually hold on, that's really scary. His line of TB being "the lovechild of Boris Johnson and Guido Fawkes" might have to go on the banner. And so inevitably another evening was spent in the bar and there were a lot more sore heads on Sunday than there had been on Saturday.

TB was a bit of a bear with a sore head himself on Sunday but the laughter induced by Russell Walter's fantastic speech on err direct action certainly livened things up. It was a fantastic weekend and as so many speakers said, nobody is doing what YBF is doing in this country and for this they have to be congratulated. Donal Blaney and Steven Dent, with the help of Mark Clarke and Matthew Richardson put together a fine selection of speakers and the organisation was like clockwork.

If you are young and interested in the political world and you haven't been to a

YBF

event yet, you are really missing out.