Gatwick Diamond Growth Gateway: The APPG takes the region’s case to the Party Conference circuit
by Geri Silverstone, Silverstone Communications and Secretariat of the Gatwick Diamond Growth Gateway APPG
Forget the old image of party conference season — rosettes, rubber chicken, speeches nobody outside the hall remembers. That’s not what it is anymore. With the political map more fluid than it’s been in a generation, conference season has become one of the only moments all year when a region can put its case straight in front of the people who’ll decide its future. Not buried in a consultation response. In the room. Live.
This autumn, the Southeast showed up. Co-Chairs Mims Davies MP and Natasha Irons MP for Croydon East, backed by the APPG’s Secretariat, took the region’s case into fringe events, receptions and roundtables across the circuit — making sure that when the parties talked growth, investment and infrastructure, the Southeast wasn’t background noise.
This isn’t networking for its own sake. It’s how a £24 billion regional economy — 45,000 businesses, a major international gateway airport, and clusters in MedTech, aviation and financial services — gets written into the national conversation, instead of waiting to be noticed after the big decisions are made.
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