Paws for thought

Over the years party conferences have become ever more stage-managed. The Liberals used, to their credit, allow their grassroots a heady dose of self-expression, pressing, sometimes potty policies on their bemused top brass, but nowadays what you see across the political spectrum is in the main carefully choreographed.

So last week's Conservative conference was predictably organised — until the intrusion that is of a cat.

The Home Secretary in her speech stated that the European Human Rights Act was hindering the expulsion of potential terrorists (I agree).

One example she gave was that a cat had been the cause of a failed deportation with the judge claiming that the pet's purchase showed that the potential deportee had a family life to which he had a 'human right'.

Ken Clarke promptly put in the proverbial hushpuppy, directly questioning the cat's curious credentials, and Mrs May's feline fable was further challenged on air by Andrew Neil.

It was left to Damian Green, the Immigration Minister, to read out on Newsnight the extract from the judge's statement. The actual position appears to be something between Mrs May's assertion and that suggested by Mr Clarke, ie, the judge had cited the cat as supporting the notion that a stable relationship had indeed been formed between the potential deportee and his partner but his statement did not appear to go as far as saying that the purchase of the cat alone had caused him to decide to grant the appellant the right to stay.

Anyhow, apart from the obvious entertainment value of all this my thought is that this whole cat-flap saga simply distracted from an important issue that was worthy of debate — something I would personally like to see more of at each of the major party's conferences in future.