Of blue suits and smelly trainers

THE most visible difference between the Conservative Party Conference and the Labour Party Conference is age-adjusted dress sense. The Conservative Party Conference is full of young people dressed like middle-aged business people. The preferred style is the blue suit with a shirt and tie but a few adventurous spirits add pocket squares, waistcoats (brightly coloured on occasion) and pocket watches.

The Labour Party Conference was full of ageing baby boomers dressed like students. The preferred style is T-shirts (often bearing the faces of Marxist heroes such as Che and the logos of rock giants such as Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin), jeans and trainers. The problem with this style is that it suits old people—which is what many of them are—even less than blue suits suit young people: the T-shirts strain to contain bulging bellies; the jeans are too tight; the trainers look smelly. The overall impression is of an adolescent who has fallen victim to premature ageing: trapped in the same clothes but biologically fast-forwarded, with the hair greying, thinning or disappearing, the paunch expanding, the skeletal frame buckling and bending.