Blue suit and smelly sneakers

The most obvious difference between the Conservative and Labour conferences is the age-adjusted dress taste. The Conservative conference was full of young men dressed like middle-aged businessmen. The preferred style was a blue suit with a shirt and tie, but a few adventurous people would add pocket squares, waistcoats (sometimes brightly coloured) and pocket watches.

At the Labour conference, the old baby boomers dressed like students. Their preferred style was T-shirts (often emblazoned with the head of Marxist hero Che Guevara, and the logos of rock stars Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin), jeans and trainers. The problem with this style is that it doesn’t suit old people – and many of them are old – even less suited to young people than a blue suit: the T-shirts barely cover bulging bellies; the jeans are too tight; the trainers look stinky. The overall impression is that of a teenager who has fallen victim to premature ageing: trapped in the same clothes, but biological ageing is advancing at a rapid pace, hair turning grey, thinning or disappearing, bellies expanding, frames buckling and deforming.