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Saturday, October 12, 2024

Labour’s Liverpool jamboree won’t all be plain sailing

Hello and welcome to this new season of Conference Confidential!

I remain Marie Le Conte, your intrepid correspondent, but essentially everything else has changed since the last time I wrote to you from Liverpool. Back in the autumn of 2023, the Labour party were in opposition and managed a four-day shindig without any infighting or self-inflicted drama. The Conservatives, meanwhile, had one last shot at saving their bacon but couldn’t quite manage it.

For a while, Westminster denizens secretly prayed – sorry – worried that Rishi Sunak would call an October election, meaning that conference season would get cancelled altogether. He instead decided to go to the country over the summer, meaning that there is sadly no escape – sorry – we’re all delighted to go on our annual jaunt to SW1-on-the-Mersey.

In theory, the gathering should be all sunshine and rainbows for the government, seeing as they have just won the largest majority in a generation. Looking a bit closer, however, means realising that not everything may be quite as rosy as it could be…

The vibe check: Labour’s conference is the hot ticket

For a start, it must be said that political insiders can be a grumpy bunch. When asked if they were looking forward to Labour’s conference, one veteran lobbyist sighed dramatically and said: “Oh, the queues in the bars are going to be so long. It’ll be impossible to get a drink anywhere.”

It may not feel like the worst thing in the world, but it is symptomatic of a bigger vibe shift. For a long time, Labour’s gathering was both chaotic yet sedate. The food and refreshments were noticeably less good than the Conservatives’, identical white men in dark blue suits were relatively few and far between, and not many of the generic hangers-on bothered turning up.

Things started changing two years ago but reached boiling point last year, as the whole centre was taken over by what I enjoy calling “the sea of Simons”. This year is predicted to be rammed, with everyone and their dog trying to get a piece of the new government.

Any even vaguely interesting fringe event will be rammed, and any reception with free wine is likely to get overly full within seconds of opening. Guestlist-only parties, which used to be reasonably easy to get into, have become so exclusive that several well-heeled attendees have already complained about the dearth of invites reaching their inbox.

On top of this, many people are already complaining that all this endless queuing and standing in crowded, sweaty rooms will lead to very little, as not much is likely to happen. They may be right, of course, as Starmer hardly is Captain Exciting, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t trouble already bubbling under the surface.

It won’t all be plain sailing

This isn’t a comparison either man would enjoy, but I’ve been finding it increasingly useful to compare Starmer’s first few months to Boris Johnson’s. Their overall character and tactics may differ, but the former seems to be falling into the same trap that eventually caused problems for the latter.

Buoyed by the size of his majority and his iron grip over the party, Starmer has spent the summer and early autumn making a long list of enemies. He removed the whip from seven of his MPs who rebelled and voted in favour of the two-child benefit cap; blindsided many in his own party by deciding to start means testing winter fuel payments; ignored the internal critics who balked at his cheerful meeting with controversial Italian PM Giorgia Meloni.

Crucially, the policies and political decisions themselves are only part of the problem. The lack of adequate pitch-rolling and patient explaining of the narrative has been grating to many. Everyone knows that any given government will have to sometimes make unpleasant choices, but they do need to at least try and get people behind them before doing so.

It is true that Starmer and his senior secretaries of state can, in theory, bulldoze through everyone and everything without facing any effective opposition, but that doesn’t mean they should never take a break from the stick, and offer an occasional carrot.

Similarly, power will always attract tension, but the sheer amount of briefing and counter-briefing currently surrounding Sue Gray and Morgan McSweeney has been unsightly at best. Labourites have been instructed to drink reasonably in Liverpool, but who knows what’ll happen when some of them disregard that advice and their tongues start to loosen even further?

Another unexpected and unwelcome star of the gathering, at least in the press, is likely to be Lord Alli. The Labour peer has, it turns out, been seemingly buying everything for everyone, from the PM’s glasses to his wife’s dresses and the birthday bashes of some senior frontbenchers. The government may hope to spend four days talking about its plans and policies, but journalists may well have other ideas.

But anyway…

None of this may actually end up mattering. It is entirely possible that the conference will be a grumpier, choppier affair than it should be, but also very likely that none of it will change a thing. Numbers are numbers, and Starmer remains at the helm of a box-fresh government with a crushing majority and a largely non-existent opposition.

Roll on Liverpool!

Marie’s newsletter will be sent to your inbox on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Sign up here: inews.co.uk/my-account/newsletters

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