Admittedly you never really feel you are at the centre of world events attending the Liberal Democrat conference, but this year feels more surreal than most – and not just because the party has conspired to have the longest conference of the lot, stretching on and on and on for five whole, long days, as long as a queue outside a Northern Rock.

The question underwriting the conference is: what are the Liberal Democrats for? It’s a good question, and the first one put to Sir Menzies Campbell at his Q&A with party members on Monday. Like the Liberal Democrat leader, who talked about liberalism versus authoritarianism and then, bafflingly, visiting people in prison and the remarkable determination of the British people, I’m not really sure. They have plenty of decent policies, and distinct ones too, on fairer treatment for illegal immigrants for instance, and a carbon-neutral Britain, but no coherent sense of direction.

Then again, very few people would notice if they did, because the public has largely stopped listening to anything that politicians say. Sir Menzies has rightly deciphered the malaise among the British as being not about politics, but about politicians and their parties. He cites the popularity of speakers from William Hague to Jeremy Paxman at the Edinburgh book fair as evidence that people are still interested in political ideas and discussion.

The Edinburgh book fair is not exactly a bastion of popular culture, but he is broadly right. There is no shortage of politics out there, from green campaigns to referendum petitions to Ann Widdecombe roadshows, but it largely disregards and disrespects Westminster and its slick politicians. People like argument. They like leaders admitting uncertainty. They liked Charles Kennedy’s humanity. They enjoy a Boris Johnson “gaffe”. It shows his mind is alive. A marketing chap at the BBC gave a presentation to a fringe meeting on Monday night which showed that the proportion of people claiming to be interested in politics – 60 per cent – is the same today as it was in the 1960s.

Yet trust has evaporated, and people have stopped listening to politicians. So no matter how distinct the Liberal Democrats, no one notices. The queues snaking from the branches of Northern Rock around the corners of small towns all over the country this week were an eloquent statement of people’s faith today in the men in suits. You can’t blame them, given that Labour and the Conservatives treat the public as morons, politics as a game of oneupmanship – thumbing their noses at one another, stitching each other up, stealing ideas, staff, allies, whatever, like public schoolboys making apple-pie beds. If only they expended as much energy working out ways to engage people with the political system again.

As the politicians offered more and more reassurances this week, more and more customers joined the queues to withdraw their funds. For days they ignored the promises that people’s money was safe. Alistair Darling’s interview on the Today programme on Monday morning, with its repeated assurances that people could have confidence in the system, just made people panic more. Eventually the Chancellor had to issue a cast-iron, written guarantee of funds – and still, yesterday, they queued. As one woman succinctly put it: “I don’t believe anything they say, I’m not prepared to take the risk.”

The public no longer accept what these figures of supposed authority are saying; instead they ask themselves suspiciously, why are they saying it? It strikes me, here in Brighton amid urgent talk about Nick Clegg v Chris Huhne, and “what we need to say to break through”, that national politics has achieved an almost complete disconnect from people’s daily lives.

It isn’t just that so many of them sound the same, arguing cautiously over semantics in ever-decreasing circles. It’s that the whole tone and style of the thing, even down to the oppressive suits they wear, so desperately needs a shake-up. Outside politics and business, and below the age of about 50, most men don’t wear suits and ties any more. If you are a young mother with a part-time job and bills you cannot afford to pay, how does a man in a dark suit speak to you? It is a solid, visible symbol of quite how out of touch politics has become; a barrier between them and us.

There must be a way to do what all politicians hanker after, and restore people’s faith in politics: involve them more. Not in consultative exercises such as big conversations, or citizens’ juries or grand focus groups, but in the actual decisions. Take a risk. Why not a referendum on the European treaty? Why not referendums, national and local, on many other issues?

If my GP’s surgery can send me a reminder that my daughter needs an injection, then it can ask my views on whether it should start providing day surgery, or open on Saturdays. If the local education authority can send me a form to fill in to register as a parent on a playgroup committee, it can send me a form asking how the local schools should be reorganised. The Government can ask me whether I want to give pregnant women £120 each to “buy fruit”. Or if I think SUVs should be taxed more highly. If I don’t care either way, I won’t answer.

With 60 per cent of homes now having broadband access, and pretty much everyone else with access to it at schools or libraries, there should be ways of including people more in political decisions where they want to be included; let the white heat of technology shine upon our political system.

But first, guys, please, lose the suits.

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