I never thought I would ever set foot in a Conservative party conference, but there I was Monday morning in central Manchester registering for three days with the Tories as part of our effort to spread the word about Power2010.

It follows my inaugural party conference last week, at Labour, and continues the themes of over indulgence of food, alcohol and political discussion. It has been especially surreal to be among so many people with who I disagree so fundamentally!

The only fringe meeting where I felt I was on vaguely familiar territory was this evening's event hosted by Liberty. It was much more popular than I had assumed and was soon standing room only.

Shami Chakrabarti chaired and was relatively good about sticking to the role. She commented that unlike certain new arrivals, Liberty has had a consistent organisational presence at the Conservative Party Conference, and would be there for years to come.

Peter Oborne spoke about Churchill's Legacy: The Conservative Case for the Human Rights Act, a pamphlet he co-authored along with fellow-panellist Tory PPC and Policy Exchange Fellow Jesse Norman.

Their argument goes that despite being introduced by a Labour government, the HRA is both conservative and Conservative. It was directly drawn from the European Convention on Human Rights which was largely created by Lord Kilmuir and Sir Winston Churchill with the help of British lawyers following World War Two.

Chris Grayling MP, the shadow Home Secretay, gave a promising talk, albeit one which was light on specifics. He pledged to end “mission creep” (the phenomenon of laws written for one purpose e.g terrorism, being extended to others); roll back the database state and limit state intrusion to what is “absolutely necessary”. He also committed to speak at next year’s Liberty fringe to be scrutinised on how well he has fulfilled his promises.

David Davis MP seems to have had a revival in popularity and was extremely well received by the Tory activists, many of whom left after he had spoken. However, Davis made an ignorant remark hypothesising that, “If we had relied on Guardian-reading vegetarians to defend liberty, we’d all be speaking German” which Sunny Hundal has picked him up on. But he also said some “admirably convincing” things about freedom, as John Harris notes.

I felt the event was typical of the Conference as a whole which lacks the air of excitement I expected, and sticks rather too rigidly to the party line afraid of making any slips or going “off message” with power so close to their grasp.

While the panel (barring Chris Grayling) were broadly coming out in favour of the HRA, oddly no-one mentioned the leadership’s attitude towards it, or how it could be changed.

The Constitution Unit published a report on Friday by leading Tories Sir George Young and Andrew Tyrie calling for all new members of the House of Lords to be ‘term peers’, serving a single term limited to three parliaments. The report sets out a series of reforms which they say should be implemented immediately with the ultimate goal of an elected second chamber.

The reforms for immediate implementation include: new additions to the Lords should be exclusively on a term peerage basis and should be there to do a clearly-defined job for a clearly-defined period; standards and sanctions in the Lords should be brought into line with the “tougher regime” in the Commons, starting with the power to expel members and a review of Lords' expenses; a truly independent Appointments Commission should be put on a statutory basis; until comprehensive reform is accomplished, Appointments Commission undertaking the appointment of all peers, and not just “non-political” appointees, to break the link between political patronage and donations.

The long term reforms aimed at an elected second chamber include: a PR voting system using the EU election boundaries (although not the pure list system); shrinking the chamber from 740 to 400 – 450; and a final balance of 80% elected members with a minority appointed element of independent experts.

Helena Kennedy announced Real Change: the open politics network in her key note address at the Compass conference. The video of it is now available to watch in two parts:

Mark Thompson, supported by Andy Hinton, has performed a statistical analysis linking the MPs exposed by the Daily Telegraph for excessive expenses to the size of their majorities. Very interestingly there is a clear positive correlation between the likelihood an MP has been implicated in the scandal and the safeness of their seat (i.e. as one goes up, so does the other).

You can see this correlation in the graph below where MPs have been listed in order of the size of their majority and divided into four quartiles (the largest majorities are in the top quartile). The numbers in the box refer to how many of the MPs featured in the Telegraph fit into each quartile. You can see a clear progression. 

Unfortunately, demonstrating the link between size of majority and implication in this scandal is very different from showing a link between majority and propensity to cheat: the use of the Daily Telegraph's list is biased – they had their own reasons for choosing which MPs to expose whereas a fair test would either take the entire group, or a random sample; the group from the Telegraph share characteristics such as prominence which could skew the results; and the analysis can only show correlation – not causation.

There's an interesting post by Tory MP David Davies (not to be confused with the former Shadow Home Secretary) in Conservative Home giving the police's perspective on the G20 protest and the practice of “kettling” (or in Davies’ fluffier and much less intimidating phrase “bubbling”). Davies is a special constable, although he was not present at the protest.

He urges caution in condemning the police over Ian Tomlinson's death before a full inquiry has been had, reminding us of the case of PC Mulhall who was wrongly accused of excessive force based on CCTV footage. Of course a full inquiry is needed before we can reach any conclusions, but while the full answer to the question, “Did a member of the police cause or contribute to Tomlinson’s death?” must await investigation by the IPCC, the question, “Were the police heavy handed?” is much clearer.

There have been numerous articles on police tactics in the last two weeks. Most of them come down too hard on one side or the other: either the protesters were there to provoke violence and burn the banks or the police were there to start a fight with entirely peaceful protesters.Davies points out that the police are human too and I completely agree – they are a diverse group like any other and among them was a section who were pumped up on adrenaline, psyched up by weeks of aggressive rhetoric and only too happy to lash out when the opportunity arose. There were also those who didn't want to be there, who just wanted to do their job and go home. There were all manner of attitudes in between.