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 Sarah Montague
For the final of the three main party conferences, Sarah Montague and some of the Today Programme team travelled up to Blackpool to cover the Conservative Party conference.听
Sarah Montague: My听week in Blackpool
Producer Owenna Griffiths bounced into our portakabin studio on the first morning of the conference claiming she had secured what is this year's conference "must have". It's a mug with a picture of Tony Blair's face in profile and when you fill it with hot liquid his nose grows - Pinocchio style.
When we tested ours, a long nose did appear but so did a leak. No sign of a crack but a steady drip, drip from the side of the Tory party product. And that has rather summed up the week.
Apparently it's us journalists who have been stirring things up all week about Iain Duncan Smith's leadership, it has of course got nothing to do with the startling number of senior conservatives who tell us - unprompted - they don't think he's up to the job.
As one party member told me early in the week we need someone to stand up and say the 'Emperor has no clothes'.
It wasn't a small boy but a young woman who first went public on air with the thought. 26 year old Georgina Hill, a听party activist, told me on Tuesday that all the young Conservatives she knew thought IDS had neither the personality nor the politics to lead the party.
When we came off air and I commented on how surprisingly - and refreshingly - forthright she had been she said, "I'm sick of hearing people say one thing in private and another when they go on telly or the radio." How often have I looked at the person across the studio table and thought that?..
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But then, as a shadow cabinet member admitted, it's one thing to think the current leader isn't up to the job, it's quite another to come up with someone who could replace him.
And when you see what is happening to IDS here, it's difficult to see why anyone else would want what must be the most thankless job in politics. True to his word IDS has produced policy after policy all week. No-one can moan about a shortage of ideas.
Some of them are breathtaking in their scale. Look at the plans for the police; stripping the Home Secretary of his over-riding control, and instead allowing locally elected groups or individuals to wield major control.
And what about health? What are the ramifications for the听entire NHS if the state is prepared to subsidise private care? It all makes for fascinating political debate, and contrary to what many people believe of journalists is a welcome break from talk of plots and personalities.
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We've heard the complete range of conservative views in our little portakabin studio tucked down the side of the Imperial Hotel. What has now become home, seemed rather shocking on the first day. We turned up at 4am in a howling gale to find the whole room rocking as it was buffeted by the winds. I did wonder how I could explain the strange howling noise on air.
There is something delightfully surreal about conducting an in-depth interview on pensions only to notice through our window onto Blackpool promenade a vast illuminated sheep swinging above the guest's head. There seems no rhyme or reason as to what is worth illuminating in Blackpool.
But then some people might say that of our coverage.
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