The Tory conference was a pseudo-sacred affair, with devotees paying homage in front of Thatcher’s old shrouds — and your reporter, initially barred, only need mention he’d once met her to gain access. But would she consider what was on offer a worthy legacy, asks ANDREW MURRAY

AS a kid, the first I came across Ken Livingstone was on television in my living room in Portsmouth.
My dad said something like “good old Red Ken, he can really stick it to the Tories.” The second time, I was rooting through old Hansard speeches in the university library for an essay I was writing on Section 28.
His speech was courageous. At a time when the majority of people thought there was something morally outrageous about gay people — when Neil Kinnock was calling Peter Tatchell a “fairy” and Patricia Hewitt was writing memos bemoaning that “the gay and lesbian issue is costing us dear amongst the pensioners” — Livingstone was raining down oratorical fury on state-sanctioned homophobia.



