Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2023 October 6

= October 6 =

Party switch
In the dim and distant past, parliament returned in October after a three-month summer break which concluded with the party conference season. There was the Liberal confererence in September followed by the Labour and Conservative conferences, in that order. More recently parliament has condescended to sit in September before breaking again for the conferences. I heard on the news this morning that the Conservative conference in Manchester has finished and the Labour one opens in Liverpool next week. When did the switch occur? Is it a ploy by Keir Starmer to gain the political initiative or something to do with Labour's landslide by-election victory yesterday? October is a popular general election month. How does this affect the party conference timetable? 89.243.13.60 (talk) 11:30, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Don't know the answer, but it can't have been a reaction to the by-election. I have been involved with planning and running not dissimilar events on a comparable scale, often using the same venues that the party conferences do, and I can tell you that such venues have to be booked at least a year in advance (usually more) because of the demand for them. Running events on this scale also typically requires at least months of behind-the-scenes planning. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.212.210.36 (talk) 17:29, 6 October 2023 (UTC)


 * We have a article (of course) called Party conference season which lists the dates back to 2012. The Conservatives have over that time, generally held theirs at the end of September and into the start of October. The exception was 2019 when the Miller/Cherry case found Boris's dodgey prorogation to be unlawful and Parliament had to sit from late September. Alansplodge (talk) 18:46, 6 October 2023 (UTC)