Do you wish you'd been in St Paul to hear Sarah Palin give the speech of her life on Wednesday? Or in the audience when John McCain pitched his presidency to American voters last night?

Wouldn't you have loved to perch in the Mile High Stadium in Denver while Barack Obama's oratory prickled your skin like a warm breeze?

OK, now let's put it another way. Will you be clearing your diary to ensure that you miss no nugget from the podium at the annual conferences about to be held by Britain's political parties?

No? Somehow we guessed as much.

While the Democratic and Republican conventions are regularly memorable, the British equi- valents too often have the appeal of eating leftover pizza for breakfast. Blame it on the frequency with which British party conferences come around. Besides the showpiece autumn gatherings, there are spring ones; also Scottish and Welsh ones.

Every now and then, someone makes a speech that ambushes the nation's attention: David Cameron's vote-for-me, look-no-autocue speech in 2005; Tony Blair's goodnight-and-good-luck swansong in 2006; also his historic decoupling from Clause Four in 1994; Neil Kinnock's Militant-mashing vitriol of 1985; David Steel's endearing prepare-for-government call to Liberals in 1981.

Notice anything? That's right, such moments come around, on average, once every four years: that is, about as frequently as US conventions.

Any fuller a timetable than that and you risk debasing the currency of such pow-wows. There is just not enough that is new in British party politics to feed so many party conferences. Mies van der Rohe's observation that less is more holds for politics just as powerfully as for architecture.