The Bournemouth Carnival of Alternative Politics II

From the founders of the Good Funeral Awards , the UK Speechwriters' Guild and the Ideal Death Show...A New Political Conference

'Every joke is a tiny revolution'

- George Orwell

Carnival gives us permission to question convention, laugh at pomposity and celebrate creative disruption.

In the dying days of summer, in the midst of the UK party conference season, we're hosting a weekend of lively debate, irreverent speech and heretical ideas by the sea.

Think Rocky Horror Show meets the council of Runnymede.

Or The Idler Festival meets the Battle of Ideas.

If you want to change the world, but you don't like the way the other political parties are organised,

this conference is for you.

If you don't just want to listen, but if you also want to be inspired to take part in the political process by organising your own events or sharing your own ideas,

this conference is for you.

If you consider politics to be a fundamentally absurd but somehow noble pastime,

if you like listening to intelligent speakers with different backgrounds,

if you want to find a place where eccentricity and open-mindedness are welcomed,

this conference is for you.

Come to the former spiritual home of Britain's political conferences, where people of all ages and incomes could be accommodated, before political fixers and corporate money sanitised open political debate and made membership meaningless.

We'll bring together the mainstream and the marginal, the old and the new, the top and the bottom.

Unlike other conferences, we choose speakers on the basis of their powerful ideas or their outstanding public speaking abilities.

Let's celebrate just some of the joys of living in 2026:

• Losing our jobs to technological innovation
• Confinement to our Netflix caves
• Running out of money
• Navigating a disintegrating political system
• Sharing our homes with adult children
• Being conscripted into a global war
• The medicalisation, atomisation and commercialisation of everything
• A world of 24-hour news, where nobody dares to tell you what's actually happening
• The impossibility of imagining a better future
  

And yet..and yet.. somehow we're alive and capable of changing ourselves and the world.

Hear new voices, discover new ideas, meet new people, share Utopian visions, then lose hope and get drunk.

Join us for the perfect antidote to inhibited political discourse.

Let's plot in Bournemouth's answer to the Davos Congress Centre, The Freemason's Hall, with its beautiful rooms, quirky symbols and brand new bar.

Our first event taught us that the first step to changing the world is to be open to wear something different, and the second step is finding some new vocabulary to talk about familiar problems

At the end of the day we'll discover there's no political difference that can't be resolved over a few pints of beer, excellent food and some lewd entertainment.

'So I'll remove the cause…but not the symptom'
- Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Rocky Horror Picture Show

SPEAKERS

Speakers will be added as we recruit them. Obviously we may get cancellations, but we'll do our best to deliver what we promise.

James Sale

James is a management consultant, educator and poet who has had over 50 books published and self-published, the most recent one published by the Bruges Group: Gods. Heroes. and Us, Greek Myths in the Modern Era.

In a world increasingly dominated by technology, materialism, and the relentless march of "progress," ancient myths often seem relegated to the realm of children's stories or outdated superstitions. James challenges this dismissal with a resounding assertion: Greek myths are not only relevant today, but they offer profound insights into the human condition, moral law, and the structures that underpin our civilisation.

ABOUT

There's a good joke about how the Americans think life is serious but not hopeless, whereas the English think life is hopeless but not serious.

Humour used to be a core part of British identity. It was what we did best. It was an antidote to our pompous and well-defined class structures.

It distinguished us from the obsessive and extreme tendencies of our European neighbours.

In recent years the playful, irreverent and pessimistic characteristics of the British psyche seem to have been scorned and repressed.

Nowhere more so than in our political discourse, where irony, wit and humour have disappeared.

At the Carnival of Alternative Politics we praise folly and willingly integrate madness into the programme.

That way we get surprisingly high-levels of intelligent debate.

Carnival is a deeply-rooted ritual in Western societies. It's a healing exercise allowing symbolic breaking of the rules without dismantling the system.

It's a way to deal peacefully with the anger and resentments of the people: an outlet for excess, transgression and rebellion.

For a season every year, it was customary to invert the social hierarchy, mock religious ritual and celebrate death and bodily functions. It's about laughter and letting out frustration.

CONTEXT

Why come to Bournemouth for a weekend?

Seaside resorts have historically attracted not only holidaymakers but also mystics, eccentrics, health reformers, artists and political visionaries.

Bournemouth has long hosted religious conferences, esoteric groups and political gatherings for precisely this reason.

It’s a gentle place.

It feels different to other urban areas.

When you get here, you breathe the clean air, you're struck by the green of the pine trees, and when you get to the beach, you're overwhelmed by the huge panorama of sea that stretches from the Isle of Wight to the Purbecks.

We live in a liminal space on the edge of land and sea.

Like Hay-on-Wye, it’s great for a weekend event.

Arrive on the Friday evening. Check in to your hotel. Go for a meal. Get up early. Then walk along the beach to the Freemasons’ Hall.

Our event is designed so you go to a couple of talks, have a coffee, chat to some people, then set off with a group for a light lunch in Boscombe (we’ll recommend some venues and warn them that there will be a bigger influx than normal.)

Then come back for the afternoon sessions, go for a meal in the evening and then take part in our night-time entertainment before returning to your hotel.

On Sunday morning, have breakfast and then come along to one of our remaining events, before heading back to where you came from in the afternoon.

Boscombe, the nearest suburb to our venue, is an edgy place.

It has all of the problems of modern Britain: loneliness, apathy, retail decay, inequality, homelessness and junkies.

Bournemouth was founded as a health resort - people came here to recover, rest, or reinvent themselves.

With its many rehab centres, Boscombe also has an underground 12-step culture.

There are people here who have been addicted to drugs and alcohol, but they have come back from the brink.

You overhear their conversations in cafés, you see people leaving church halls after meetings, or at the school gates you’ll spot an AA tattoo.

What can recovering addicts teach us about politics?

Addicts discover the limits of rational control.

Their recovery depends on giving up rational control.

They have to acquire a new discipline and optimism based on faith.

This faith is expressed thought service.

The ideas behind the 12-steps are widely available in the mainstream thanks to the internet and the testimonies of celebrities.

They are a rebuke to the economistic, managerial and technocratic ideologies that prevail in Britain today.

Boscombe has all the problems of modern Britain. It is unique because it also has a solution.

If you live locally, we host regular supper clubs and conversations groups throughout the year which you are welcome to join.

Political Knights meets regularly at Chaplin's & The Cellar Bar and Indaba Club meets at Wild Café.

OUR POLITICS

Carnival subverts the idea of 'rational control'.

We are in favour of: levity, nobility, fair-play, femininity, vulgarity, competition, initiative, youth, small business, pubs, excellence, marriage, living with less, eccentricity, failure, imagination, ritual, faith, poetry, craft, conflict, amateurism, tradition, laughter, suffering and natural death.

We are against: fear, computers, anything 'free', rationalism, efficiency, medicalisation, puritanism, secularism, 'safe' places, security, equality, surveillance, informality, swearing, comfort, economies of scale, statisticians, advertising, mass production, polling, modern universities, charities, retirement and Tony Blair.

THE VISION

Our vision is to, 'Make Britain Posh Again'.

Our institutions are obsessed with equalising and levelling.

What about tradition? What about belonging? What about informed prejudice based on experience?

When the Berlin Wall fell, British politicians said they wanted a 'classless' society.

In 2026 we now have a 'classless' society and every day it grows to resemble life behind the former Iron Curtain.

We reject radical social engineering and rational control.

We believe in the pursuit of excellence, of formality and of good manners.

As Jerry Seinfeld pointed out, 'We are proud of things we should be ashamed about, and ashamed of things we should be proud about.'

OUR MANIFESTO SO FAR

1) Adopt more elegant dress in work and social situations.

2) Avoid addressing people by their first name.

3) Work on making our voices sound more authoritative and distinct.

4) Support businesses that prioritise human interaction.

5) Deprofessionalise sport.

SUPPORT

We're unusual as an organisation in that we want to attract people who are inspired not just to join us, but also copy us.

In our era, when we see a political event or watch a podcast, we have to ask ourselves: who is putting this on? Who is covering the costs? What is their motivation?

The only way to discover if something is 'real' is to set it up yourself.

The Carnival of Alternative Politics looks at the political parties and concludes that we need to create something entirely new.

Something that completely rejects the existing social order.

Do we need rich donors or think tanks to come up with new policies and change the political weather?

Maybe not. Maybe new ideas can acquire their own momentum.

Bournemouth has been described as the town 'diversity destroyed'.

For our first event, we invited top politicians to come here and tell us what they would do to solve the problems.

None of them we asked were interested in taking up such a specific challenge. We couldn't get a single elected politician to show up and speak, most likely because we made levity our core value.

The main fear of most of our politicians is finding themselves in situation over which they have no control.

If you want to be a politician, you have to take risks. You have to be able to articulate ideas and find out how they land. If you never take any risks, you will never discover what others are really thinking, which means you cannot mature or grow in stature.

Another problem with politicians is their lack of performing skills: they avoid hostile audiences, they have little training in rhetoric and the 'professionalisation' of their career path means they rarely have personal experience of the problems facing their constituents.

As one commentator put it, 'The more 'professional' our politics became, the less 'professional' were the people involved in it.'

We want to build relationships with like-minded people who want to take action, not sit on commissions.

INSPIRED BY DAVID BOYLE

Few things make us feel more empty than the unexpected news of a friend’s death. I first met David Boyle when he was a parliamentary candidate for the Regent’s Park and Kensington North constituency in 2001. He was interested in the community website I was running for Paddington. He outlined to me his ideas about small business, money and community regeneration.

I read many of David’s books and found them to be sensible and uplifting. I attended a breakfast he organised where he made a funny speech about the connection between currency and the Wizard of Oz. He lamented the changes in middle-class life and the corruption of London in the 21st century. He had catholic interests and published slim volumes on various subjects. He had a wry and absurdist take on institutions and political change.

The most important idea I picked up from David was that there are many currencies.

We focus exclusively on material wealth, how to get funding, how to get a bigger salary, how to help people materially. But material wealth is the lowest currency. It does not eliminate spiritual poverty.

Put energy and time into cultivating friendships, and you will be rich in friends. Put energy and time into supporting your community, and you will find support within your community. A currency is just something that circulates.

An obsession with material wealth at the expense of action creates the collective poverty we witness all around us.

Having not seen him for many years, I hoped to meet up with David at the LibDem conference in Bournemouth in September 2025. But when I Googled him, I discovered he had died. During his last years he suffered from a debilitating illness. All those wonderful political ideas he had and the wise books he wrote. I felt sad. What would happen to them now?

David's work had one broad theme: the importance of human-scale institutions over centralised ones, human imagination over dull rationalism, and the human spirit over technocratic reduction.

A nagging sense of loss inspired the creation of a format where David would have excelled. He made everyone laugh. He was a great writer, very English and very modest. Rediscover his books. You will find they embody the spirit of The Carnival of Alternative Politics.

Brian Jenner

SPEAKING COMPETITIONS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

There is huge emphasis on passing written exams in school. But what about learning to 'be'?

How do you acquire the confidence to stand up for what you believe in? To challenge authority? To articulate ideas with humour and conviction?

One of Peter Mandelson's schoolteachers explained how they once gave him the task of delivering the speech by Marc Anthony in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

They could tell there and then what his future vocation was likely to be.

At the Carnival we want to give young people a chance to perform outside school, to observe them as they seek to find their own voice and to discover new talent for the future.

For the first Carnival we contacted local schools and invited them to put forward pupils to give a two-minute speech about ‘The Adult World I Want To Live In’.

We had half-a-dozen entries and we created a theatrical ritual for them. They put on a cape and drew a sword from a stone before introducing themselves to the audience.

We want to hear from young people about what it’s like to live in their world. What problems they have been through? What hopes and fears they have for the future? What political change would they like to see?

We offer a platform to young people to share their ideas. The contest is hosted by a professional speechwriter and our first competition was judged by Bournemouth East MP, Tom Hayes.

TERMS & CONDITIONS

The purpose of the Carnival of Alternative Politics is to give a platform to lively and eloquent speakers and to create formats where their ideas can be evaluated and challenged.

The conference is designed to be light-hearted so paying customers can get out the house and spend a day listening to stimulating talks, contributing their own views and meeting like-minded people.

The events are sustained by the talent of the speakers and the financial contributions of the people who want to listen to them.

As far as possible the events will provide a broad spectrum of opinion, but the main criteria is, will people pay the price of a ticket to attend? Can we cover the travel expenses of the speakers? Can we cover our own expenses and generate enough profit to pay for the next one?

All speakers must negotiate the terms of their own appearance and get an agreement in writing.

Speakers must observe decorum, this means that the style, language, and content of contributions needs to be fitting for the subject, audience and occasion.

The audience may include people under 18. If speakers go over time, use bad language or make offensive statements, they will not be invited back.

The Carnival of Alternative Politics is organised by Brian Jenner.

Brian Jenner is a professional speechwriter and event organiser. He is the founder of the UK Speechwriters’ Guild and the European Speechwriter Network, which has organised 25 conferences over the past 17 years in locations all over Europe. He was also involved in organising BoMoCreatives, Conurbation 2050, the Good Funeral Awards and the Ideal Death Show.

Funds for the Carnival are processed through an account called CombtheBeach. CombtheBeach is a not-for-loss business. It is not a charity, a political organisation, or a partnership. It is managed through a sole trader account owned and administered by Brian Jenner.

Read the article about our first event on The Daily Sceptic here.

Read the article about our first event on the Indaba website here.

Read the article about our first event on The Speechwriter website here.

Carnival is something that people create and and generate for themselves.
Mikhail Bakhtin

Call us on 07545 232980

Email: enquiry [at] thespeechwriter.co.uk