Well, it's all over bar the yawning. When William Hague finishes his speech to the Tory faithful today, the party conference season will have finished for another year.

Looking back on this season, like almost any other in recent years, there has been a lot of sound and fury signifying almost nothing.

First we had Charles Kennedy, so laid back in style he almost fell asleep during his own speech.

Then we had Tony Blair here at Brighton in a performance notable more for sweat than for substance.

Now we have Billy the Kid, who already seems to have spoken several times to the Tories this week before his finale.

Can anyone apart from the speechwriters really remember more than an odd word of what they say? Does any of it matter? Increasingly the answer is No as conferences become less a place for genuine argument and decision, and more an opportunity for spin doctors to do their best.

The Tories realised long ago that their conferences were really simply an opportunity for clever stage management.

The last politically interesting one was way back in 1963 when Prime Minister Harold Macmillan fell ill and all the possible successors were running around trying to take his place.

Gradually the conferences have become slicker and smoother until now they do not even have votes any more.

The opportunity for oratory is there but is largely ignored. The latest memorable phrase I can recall uttered at a Tory conference was by Margaret Thatcher the best part of 20 years ago.

Even then when she declared that the lady's not for turning, everyone knew that the phrase actually came from her speechmaker Ronald Millar.

Labour conferences used to contain more passion and drama. There were perennial clashes between Left and Right; between unions and the Government.

Hugh Gaitskell declared he would fight and fight again for the party he loved while Nye Bevan declared in a row over nuclear power that he would not go naked into the conference chamber.

In the Eighties at Brighton we had the agonisingly tight contest between Tony Benn and Denis Healey for the deputy leadership, followed two years later by the election of Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley as the top two in the party.

But by then the spin doctors had got to work, describing them as the dream team, and things have declined steadily since then.

The Liberals were the last to succumb. Unlike the others, they had a rule that anyone could go along to their conferences and anyone did, meaning that the halls were overrun by odd but amiable men with beards and sandals.

They could make mischief and occasionally did, notably at Eastbourne in the Eighties, which precipitated the unmourned departure of Dr David Owen.

Since then, they have become the Liberal Democrats. Shoes have replaced the sandals and they are just as dull as all the others.

That terrible bomb in 1984 which killed five people and injured many more in Brighton during the 1984 Tory conference also changed forever the free and easy nature of conferences.

Now there is strict security provided at huge cost around all of them.

We are constantly told that big political conferences bring in millions of pounds directly to the resorts staging them, and that may be true but they also put many people off going into town.

I am hearing reports that shop takings in Brighton town centre were down by 20 per cent last week.

Even the restaurants did not fare all that well because so much food was provided by companies with points to make to politicians that delegates were able to eat well and free all week.

It is partly the fault of TV and newspapers that this nonsense takes place.

There's nothing the media likes better than a fixed event and at some conferences there appear to be more BBC hacks than delegates.

All the time they go around devoting acres of space to the politicians, it only encourages them.

If they all went away, the conferences would soon collapse, for then there would be no point to them at all.

But I am afraid we are stuck with them for many more years to come.

I can already predict the political weather forecast for next September when Labour returns.

It is for only a few bright periods with plenty of wind and occasional drivel.