Today, I attended the "Take Your Seat" conference in Millbrook, near Bedford, for an all day conference. Association Chairmen, Regional and Campaign Directors, as well as agents from approximately 200 marginal seats were invited to attend, and over a 1000 people from around the country made the effort to do so. I attended the event with Mark Clarke, CF Chairman, who has also written up the event on his blog.

The event, pulled together by Lord Aschroft, and his marginal seats team (including Simon Jones), was an excellent insight into the direction that the Conservative Party is heading and was an extremely professional affair. Obviously a lot of what was said was confidential but what was clear from what we heard is that the Conservative Party are serious about our target seats, about professionalism, and about supporting our constituencies.

Lord Ashcroft chaired the event. Speakers included Francis Maude, Don Porter, Stephen Gilbert and Gavin Barwell from the Target Seats team, Patrick McLoughlin, the Chief Whip, as well as David Cameron.and has clearly devoted a great deal of thought, as well as time and resources to the strategy for the next election.

 Lord Ashcroft is clearly committed to seeing the Conservatives back in Government and does much to support the party. As well as the hard work that he has put into this event, he has consistently supported Conservative Future.

Personally, I made the most use of the great opportunity to meet with most of the Regional Directors and to discuss in more detail our CF marginal seats plan. They were uniformly impressed with the idea, and keen to support it in their areas. I also spoke to a number of delegates and was inundated with requests to add their constituency to wave 2 of marginal seats.

Also at the event, demonstrating what a professional campaign centre might look like were Ranil Jayawardena, Karen Allen, Tanya de Hoedt, and Richard Jackson from CF. It was also great to see some of our CF members as key delegates such as Gavin Maclure, former Area Chairman for Norfolk and Suffolk, and Chris Wales, Area Chairman for West Yorkshire.

As an aside the venue was fantastic - the site, owned by General Motors, is used to test cars from most of the major manufacturers including cruise control banked lanes, and a huge testing site. Needless to say there were stewards to make sure we didn't accidentally end up on the test track!