The Wardman Wire

Apologies that this update has been a little while in coming, but that’s largely been due to a very frantic and busy first day here at conference. We arrived on Sunday morning and Birmingham was very quiet, the ICC near-empty - but by lunchtime the masses had descended and it was heaving.

A couple of good speeches in the conference hall so far, with Cameron offering a solid introduction. But the highlight so far has to be London mayor Boris Johnson, who was on excellent form and got the crowd fired up for the week ahead.

One innovation the Tories are trying here is asking people to text David Cameron with their ideas and feedback on the conference. Reaching out to the masses, or a (not so) subtle ploy to get young voters’ phone numbers?

Reform had a very busy day yesterday, as we hosted five fringe events. Some of the highlights were:

• ITV and Channel 4 attending “The future of media”, our event co-hosted with the BBC
• A somewhat disgruntled Lehman Brothers employee, who came to our event on private equity to discuss Lehman’s bankruptcy, announced a mere week after he started work there
• Gordon Brown “didn’t mend the roof when the sun was shining”, according to the Shadow Health Minister Stephen O’Brien
• Adam Afriyie, Shadow Universities Minister, making a policy announcement at our universities event: the Conservatives will invest £5m on a web-based service providing information to university students about courses, employment prospects and starting salaries

This morning we held three round-table breakfasts. At one of these, on the subject of young offending, Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve highlighted the three key points needed to tackle the issue: mentoring, employment, and housing security.

Lots more happening, with Chris Grayline speaking on welfare at a Reform event tonight - for full details of our fringe events at conference click here.