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Labour conference can only get better The vibes are well and truly off

A Labour wonk in the rain. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

A Labour wonk in the rain. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images


September 25, 2024   6 mins

It wasn’t meant to be like this. This was meant to be a victory lap during a honeymoon period on the banks of Liverpool’s River Mersey. It was meant to be Things Can Only Get Better, but it has the feel of a knacker’s yard — a tired, end-of-term government mired in sleaze and briefing wars after just two months in office. The vibes are well and truly off at the Labour conference.

Keir Starmer’s speech tried to strike a positive note after weeks of talk about black holes and “difficult choices”. Instead we heard about the “politics of national renewal” and “a country with its future back”. The hall lapped it up, of course. But outside you feel it will fall on deaf ears, save for an unfortunate mispronunciation that saw the Prime Minister call for “the return of the sausages”.

We’ve been explicitly warned that, contrary to D:Ream’s lyric, things will only get worse. And yet delegates are still trying to make the most of it inside the conference complex, a slick product of urban “regeneration” on the Merseyside docklands, a place that feels cut off from the city proper. Outside the bubble of the secure zone, it’s hard to find anyone normal who even knows the conference is taking place.

“Labour used to be different than it is now,” says Graham, a retired firefighter, shielding from the rain. He’s not wrong. It’s a bumper year for the corporate lobbyists, even as the unwritten rule of omertà on Westminster perks has been broken. Previously, the fact that everyone had their snouts in the freebies trough was enough to ensure that opposition MPs and journalists wouldn’t make too much of a fuss when ministers got tickets to the football.

It’s clear Labour has no shortage of benefactors. Conference itself is one big, sponsored jamboree for Twitter-addicted politicos being plied with hospitality from whichever corporate “government relations” department has too much budget. But, juxtaposed with cuts to winter fuel payments and promises of blood, sweat and tears, the sight of the new crowd in donated designer gear is particularly grating. That is doubly so when Keir Starmer made a virtue out of his holier-than-thou, lawyerly aesthetic, distinguishing himself against the cavalier profligacy of Boris, or the air of tech-bro entitlement surrounding Sunak.

A group of pensioners are protesting next to a Ferris wheel, more-or-less the closest they can get to the main buildings. “Labour have come up against the pressure of the establishment to not do anything radical,” says Dave, a retired IT man, not impressed with losing his £200-per-annum energy subsidy. He’s in a huddle carrying flags for Unite, the most vocally militant of the Labour-affiliated unions. “There’s no point getting a Labour government in to do the same as the Tories did.”

“They’re all the same” is a crude summation, but one widely held outside of political circles. The truth is that the last election was a choice between two subtly distinct tribes from the adjacent worlds of public-private-third sector managerialism. One is more likely to have read Hayek, or to be seen at the drinks receptions of the Institute for Economic Affairs or the Centre for Policy Studies in Birmingham next week; the other might read Mazzucato, and clink glasses at the Institute for Public Policy Research or the Resolution Foundation — feeder-group think tanks for the policy and personnel of the parliamentary Labour Party.

This is Mecca for that strange nexus of the public affairs-wonk-Whitehall world, drunk on warm booze, and high off proximity to the dullest form of power. It’s a world of lanyards, laptops, stale sandwiches and Marks & Spencer cuts for people who get excited when they see Laura Kuenssberg, and who name-drop their MP acquaintances to anyone who will listen. They walk hurriedly between drinks events, always held “in partnership” with a generous private outfit and their lobbying team, jabbing at phone screens with furrowed brows.

“It’s a world of lanyards, laptops, stale sandwiches and Marks & Spencer cuts for people who get excited when they see Laura Kuenssberg.”

Inside the conference, stands for Google, Barclays and HSBC sit awkwardly alongside the trade union old guard and remnants of the activist Left. The latter look slightly anachronistic in Starmer’s Labour Party. Labour has gone from having big names like Nye Bevan (coal miner, trade union official, councillor, MP) to big names like Torsten Bell (PPE at Oxford, political adviser, think tanker, MP).

Someone working in conference services has had their fun at least: the stall distributing the Morning Star, the old rag of the socialist Left, sits six feet opposite from Labour Friends of Israel; the Cuba Solidarity Campaign shares a cramped space next to an escalator with Labour Friends of the Armed Forces. All this is indicative of what could charitably be called Labour’s “broad church”. More cynically, it could be called an incoherent mess of contradictory worldviews. That is Labour’s internal politics: never-ending battles for the soul of the party, permanent factional war because of a first-past-the-post system that won’t allow amicable divorce.

Starmer’s electoral bond with the British public was always skin deep — a marriage of convenience rather than one of love. Fourteen years of stagnant wages, followed by the embarrassments of Partygate and Liz Truss, meant that the Labour leader only had to appear as the unthreatening, not-Tory option. Nobody mistook the Prime Minister’s pained, nasal consultancy-speak for raw charisma or inspirational vision. And few were inspired by a manifesto that accurately diagnosed Britain’s relative decline, but came up short on adequate solutions. There was nothing in yesterday’s keynote address that we hadn’t heard before.

One group that thinks it has the answers are the Yimbies at the Yimby Rally. Low growth? The housing crisis? The energy transition? For this terminally online subculture, there are few problems that planning reform can’t solve. In the “Imagine Room”, a Californian, Nolan Gray, tries to do some panto-style call-and-response to a crowd that just wants to chit-chat about the Town and Country Planning Act. Do people realise how weird this is? Over the hubbub, Chris Curtis, the YouGov pollster-turned-MP for Milton Keynes, is hailing 2024 as “a year of change, a year where we have turned the tide on those who have tried to block building”.

There’s nothing wrong, of course, with making it easier, faster and cheaper to build homes, railway lines and electricity pylons. But when faced with the abject state of a collapsed public realm, the steady death of the UK’s industrial base, and yawning gaps between the dynamic economy of the metropole compared with the rest of the country, there’s a grand divergence between the deep, structural imbalances at play and the proposed solutions. They seem to have bet the house on planning-as-panacea.

There are elements of Labour’s programme from which the Left could take heart. Nationalised rail, a public energy company, some new employment rights. And yet these won’t satiate a restless public for whom cynicism has become the default position. Talk about expediting planning applications or industrial strategy councils may excite the faithful, but it has little cut-through in the real world.

To be sure, the new occupants of Downing Street have a grim inheritance. The era of negative real interest rates is over. Servicing public debt is costing the taxpayer almost as much as the education budget. The ambitious programmes of public ownership and fiscal stimulus that the party’s Left flank craves had an inner logic when money was cheap. In the post-Covid world, with the Bank of England keeping rates stubbornly high, fiscal constraints are very real.

The country has seen more than a decade of flatlining productivity. We’ve had a once-in-a-generation energy crisis. Just since Labour entered office, job losses have been announced in a host of old industrial clusters: Tata Steel in Port Talbot, Harland and Wolff in Belfast, and Grangemouth oil refinery. The government came to power talking a language of the activist state, a “post-neoliberal” political economy more sceptical of globalisation, and more eager to intervene in markets.

But this kind of “Bidenomics” paradigm (the Chancellor Rachel Reeves prefers “securonomics”) lacks heft without significantly higher investment. The Government is spooked by the power of bond markets, wary of appearing too Truss-like — or, God forbid, too Corbynite. There’s an air of Philip Snowden about Reeves: the first Labour Chancellor, a Christian socialist, took office in 1924, only to recommit even more forcefully than the Conservatives to balanced budgets, “sound money” and the gold standard.

Much hinges on growth. The Prime Minister spoke of this core aim (or is it a hope?) as “light at the end of the tunnel”. But Reeves’s first budget next month will be a defining moment, confirming whether the Chancellor can tinker with her fiscal rules enough to manoeuvre herself out of Britain’s cul-de-sac, the endless cycle of raided capital budgets and false economies coming home to roost.

“My mates and me are all quite strong about the illegal immigrant thing,” Graham, the retired firefighter, tells me. Just six weeks ago, a few yards away from the conference centre, a large anti-migrant demonstration turned violent in the wake of the Southport murders. Alongside the traditional far-Right, the riots were spurred on by a strange, diffuse band of online wellness advocates, anti-vax fitness gurus, CBD salesmen and conspiratorial Instagram influencers. Outside the conference centre, there’s as much cut-through of those bizarre imaginaries as there is of any “Labour Yimby” programme. Starmer might want to talk about “partnerships”, “missions” and public service reform, but few are listening. If the Government fails to deliver, things could get much, much worse. We can’t say we weren’t warned.


Despotic Inroad is a pseudonym for a freelance writer and journalist.

DespoticInroad

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Jonathan Gibbs
Jonathan Gibbs
20 days ago

Remeber that for close to 15 years the BOE set rates that PAID the government to borrow money.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
19 days ago
Reply to  Jonathan Gibbs

… and made Keir Starmer and the Camlington Labour elites into multi-millionaires in the process. Why anyone living outside the M25 votes for these guys will forever remain unfathomable.

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
19 days ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Where I live the world is massively Labour. Compared to the SE of England, we are incredibly poor and it is the comparison which matters most. Anybody over 50 votes Labour because of Margaret Thatcher. The Tories are the ‘toffs’ and Labour is still the party of the working man. But today this means the party of the not-working man. A very small number of people vote Plaid because it seems to offer hope, even though it doesn’t have any policies. It is difficult for those in London to understand that there are almost no buses, very few trains, hardly any trunk roads and definitely very little industry. Huge areas have no gas.
It is difficult to erase these beliefs. The Senedd decided to copy Scotland and reduce the voting age to 16, only to find that these young people want to vote for Reform. Probably, the Senedd election in 2026 will be the first not to result in a Labour control.
In the North of England there is the same poverty. Note that this poverty is relative, compared to the SE of England and it manifests itself in feelings of hopelessness. In effect there are several ‘nations’ in the UK – Wales, Northern Scotland, Southern Scotland, Northern Ireland, England north of the Watford Gap and London. The laws and the government come from London which is rich.

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
19 days ago

“It is difficult to erase these beliefs”

There’s a chart from YouGov somewhere that illustrates that labour are now the party of the wealthy breaking down voting by salary bracket. But I agree, long held dogma is very hard to displace.

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
19 days ago

Poor areas vote Labour and, guess what, they stay poor. If it’s any consolation, Caradog, the entire country will have no gas if Miliband gets his way.

David Morley
David Morley
19 days ago

 In effect there are several ‘nations’ in the UK

read an article recently re Germany still remaining divided economically after unification. It was hard not to think it sounded like the U.K.

Josie Bowen
Josie Bowen
19 days ago

And full of foreigners.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
19 days ago

It is the inter action of world affairs, technology, warfare and resources which influence the development of the economy. Most of Britain, especially the Unions refuse to understand this basic fact. Ask a Union member what was the result of capture of Constantinople by the Turks, the Reconquista in Spain and printing and they do not have a clue. These basic three events created the Western expansion.
Today it is the creation of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla and other companies involved in electronic and computer science in California which shapes the World. Turing developed the mathematics of computing and Flowers built the first computer in the 1940s but where were the unions who understood the power of the technology in the late 1940s? 

Richard Hart
Richard Hart
18 days ago

Having worked in Wigan and Blackpool in the past two years, I can assure you the poverty is not relative. It is pretty absolute.

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
19 days ago
Reply to  Jonathan Gibbs

And large proportion of those gilts where issued as index linked as well (the geniuses) which was grandy and dandy back in the days of ZIRP but now . . .

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
19 days ago

Many of these Liability Driven Investments (LDIs) were for the pensions of the Bank of England employees.

The Bank of England knew what they were doing. 🙂

Phil Day
Phil Day
20 days ago

I thought the conference was a resounding success. Clearly knowing all the right buzzwords and (student) groupthink is the magic solution to every problem this country is facing.
We’re saved l tell you – hallelujah!

For those collecting 2tK memes :

Kier Canute – for claiming he can hold back the tide of illegal immigration by playing whack-a-mole with the smuggling gangs.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
20 days ago
Reply to  Phil Day

King Cnut did precisely the opposite, wishing to demonstrate to his over-expectant subjects that no, he couldn’t control the tides.

That’s been twisted over time, hence the common misconception.

If only Starmer had the wisdom or imagination of Cnut.

Phil Day
Phil Day
19 days ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Yep, l do know the legend of the original Canute.
Give it a couple of weeks and Sir Janus Starmfuhrer will be claiming he was trying to prove that he couldn’t perform miracles all along.
Agree the original Canute was very colourful and, in my opinion, preferable to almost all of our current shower of ‘leaders’. He would, of course, be dismissed as a far-right populist today.

Tim Clarke
Tim Clarke
19 days ago
Reply to  Phil Day

Sir Janus Starmfuhrer, I love that!

Ian Wigg
Ian Wigg
19 days ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

He is the embodiment of a cnut though.

Richard Rolfe
Richard Rolfe
19 days ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Trying spelling Cnut a bit differently.

Alphonse Pfarti
Alphonse Pfarti
19 days ago
Reply to  Richard Rolfe

He frequently pops up on the website … Is a Cnut, that’s for sure. Well into double figures of Cnuting already.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
19 days ago
Reply to  Phil Day

Cnut was a Viking. His solution to all problems was the the use of overwhelming force. Cnut would have probably invaded France and killed everyone associated with the smuggling gangs.
A description of Cnut’s army
Furthermore, in this great expedition, there was present no slave, no man freed from slavery, no low-born man, no man weakened by age; for all were noble, all strong with the might of mature age, all sufficiently fit for any type of fighting, all of such great fleetness, that they scorned the speed of horsemen.
Encomium Emmae Reginae
The “Elites” of the Western world are now plump pasty face stooped shouldered narrow chested clerks with degrees.

Richard Hart
Richard Hart
18 days ago
Reply to  Charles Hedges

Hard Times, strong men.
Strong men, good times.
Good times, weak men.
Weak men, hard times.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
19 days ago

Why does a ‘retired IT man’ need a £200 energy subsidy? That’s the British disease in a nutshell.

AC Harper
AC Harper
19 days ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

It is a very human feeling to resent having something taken away more than never having it in the first place.
Either Labour were tin-eared and did not understand this human trait or were thrilled at the prospect of taking the ‘well off’ down a peg or two. Neither instils any faith in a Government allegedly driven by the politics of national renewal.

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
19 days ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Sort of agree. The best thing would be to stop the disastrous NetZero rubbish and revert to gas, nuclear and a bit of fracking.

Kiddo Cook
Kiddo Cook
19 days ago

……and coal. Three hundred years of it under our feet. Cut the Net zero fantasy at Drax, let Tennessee and Canada keep their trees and, burn coal. Chinese and Indians are buying it up. With no signs of slowing their coal powered power stations. Do it. Throw out EDF from Suffolk , the Chinese from Somerset and Qatari gas.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
19 days ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

The benefit was for all pensioners, so who else do you want to exclude when they retire, NHS workers, like those on over £80k pa, local authority workers and civil servants on similar salaries, especially those WFH?

John Tyler
John Tyler
19 days ago

Labour’s election result seems a great victory to Labour supporters. In reality it was a hollow one at best. They won, not through inspirational policies or superior morality, but by default. Conference attendees loudly cheered some of the main speakers’ sound bites, but there was little substance on show. When the true highlight was the “sausages” mistake it tells a sorry tale.

George Stone
George Stone
19 days ago
Reply to  John Tyler

What a hilarious mistake though.

Ian Wigg
Ian Wigg
19 days ago
Reply to  George Stone

Wonder if the term has been used at meetings and Starmer had heard, and used it, so many times it had become the default.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
19 days ago
Reply to  Ian Wigg

One way or another, it doesn’t sound like he views them as people. Not surprising as you would have to avoid that if you want to be ok about Hamas actions on Oct 7.

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
19 days ago
Reply to  Bret Larson

Hamas’ actions followed 30 odd massacres, an ethnic cleansing and numerous acts of terrorism suffered by Palestinians at the hands of zionists with a little help from their powerful friends. Just thought you might like to know.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-21/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/zionist-military-org-efforts-to-recruit-nazis-in-fight-against-the-british-are-revealed/00000188-d93a-d5fc-ab9d-db7ae0ea0000

J 0
J 0
19 days ago
Reply to  mac mahmood

Anyone who relishes the destruction of the only open, liberal, economically successful, gay friendly, women supporting, democracy in the middle-east, while applauding a bunch of severely homophobic, uber misogynistic, racist totalitarians, isn’t going to have their views taken seriously – except by terrorists and other murderers.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
19 days ago
Reply to  mac mahmood

If the arabs had done the following , there would be no Israel
Not sold land to Jewish settlers from the 1890s onwards. Risen up in 1915 with the Sherif of Mecca and taken Jerusalem from the Turks in the manner Damascus was captured by Lawrence and the Sherif’s army , there would be no Israel.More Jews fought with Allenby to liberate Jerusalem than Arabs.Fought with the Allies in WW2 which would have meant Stalin would not have armed Israel.

William Cameron
William Cameron
19 days ago
Reply to  George Stone

Yes it offended both sides in the middle east conflict.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
19 days ago

Especially if they were pork sausages.

j watson
j watson
19 days ago

Three months in, thinking careful about what they do given the dreadful hand been dealt (as opposed to a Mad Liz sugar-rush!). Appreciating markets are watching closely and some big world events over next couple of months will have considerable influence. Still a sense we’ve adults in charge at last even if they aren’t exactly handing out the sweets.
Conferences are overwhelmingly for the memberships. The Budget going to be where we start to get more clarity.
The Right Wing media was always going to pile in relieved it’s own aren’t at the helm anymore. Yet never forget it’s the gross over simplification supported and pedalled by the Right wing media that got us into this mess.

William Cameron
William Cameron
19 days ago
Reply to  j watson

I see no adults. I see a number of low grade junior managers and the odd zealot.

George Stone
George Stone
19 days ago
Reply to  j watson

The adults in charge is exactly what Labour have been saying about themselves, but I don’t believe it. The Labour party`have been stupid and completely over the top about their leaders, going back to at least Kinnock. Singing their names in adulation – do me a favour! I fear this will end in tears as usual.

William Cameron
William Cameron
19 days ago

Labour did not win. The Tories lost. The Tories only polled 15% of the electorate- their vote collapsed. The Labour Party won 20% of the electorate. (Corbyn won more in 2019) .
So Labour claim of “victory” is silly . The idea they have public support for a mandate is untrue.
But sadly after 14 years in opposition they have no coherent plan. Other than Angela Rayner grabbing tax payer funded photoshoots of her gurning with glee at her sudden wealth..
I blame the Tories for failing so badly as to lumber us with this alternative bunch of third rate politicians.

Phil Day
Phil Day
18 days ago

Labour’s claim of having ‘won a mandate’ is also fantasy for the reasons you state.
By quirk of fate they won an election and power they didn’t deserve but by no stretch of the imagination do they have a mandate of any sort.

Andrew Nellestyn
Andrew Nellestyn
19 days ago

An excellent summary The lofty unrealistic idealism wrapped in the arrogance of those “who know best” is passé – repugnant! Take a leaf out of Farange’s book. He better understands and connects with those who truly matter and need sober, effective and rational leadership. Not the gang sporting PPE regalia. London is not Britain! Gone are the days of the “gentry” lording it over the “proletariat”! And yes there are way too many “lords”. Perhaps a fundamental change in governance structure is well nigh upon the UK. The same can be said of global democracies in transition to Huxley and Orwell tyrannical dictatorships. One World unelected and unaccountable government as per the Schwab WEF model must be expunged!

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
19 days ago

The Lords dominated politics up to 1830s until Reform Acts reform acts and Repeal of the Corn Laws and this was a period of of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. The Lords were aristocrats who spotted and encouraged talent. It started with the Agricultural Revolution increasing the production of food which enabled the workers in factories to be fed. The Duke of Bridgewater paid for Brindley to buid the first canal which reduced the price of coal by 75 %.
div > p:nth-of-type(2) > a”>James Brindley – Wikipedia
During the domination of Britain by the aristocracy and impoverished illiterate miner invented steam railways, G Stephenson and an impoverished farm labourer’s son, Thomas Telford built bridges throughout Britain.
div > p:nth-of-type(3) > a”>George Stephenson – Wikipedia
Telford also came from poverty and ended up FRS.
div > p:nth-of-type(4) > a”>Thomas Telford – Wikipedia
Captain James Cook RN FRS came from poverty.
Genius recognises talent, mediocrity sees itself. The mediocre resent and feel spite towards genius and attempts to destroy it because they are outshone.

David Whitaker
David Whitaker
19 days ago

Great piece. Talk about a demolition job!

Santiago Saefjord
Santiago Saefjord
19 days ago

Why is everything labour, even articles about them, just increasingly word salad? I hope they fall off a cliff at the next election

Peter Walton
Peter Walton
19 days ago

All that has happened is a middle management change. The underlying issues of zero manufacturing and zero ability to fight a war because the industries required have gone bust under loony green policies.

Andrew H
Andrew H
19 days ago

Wonderful stuff

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
19 days ago

Labour has doubled down on the Tories’ ridiculous energy policy, meaning the energy crisis will last for a generation rather than being once in a generation. Buy candles!

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
19 days ago

The original policy, that May ramped up, was Labour’s 2008 Climate Change Act.

John Howes
John Howes
19 days ago

A more apt conference theme might be Jethro Tull, Living in the Past.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
19 days ago

This was meant to be a victory lap during a honeymoon period on the banks of Liverpool’s River Mersey.
There is seldom much of a honeymoon following a shotgun marriage, and Labor’s election was the equivalent of that. There was not triumphalism; the few who did bother voting were not seeking to praise Labor but rather, to damn the Tories. Come on; that’s been obvious for some time, even the time leading up to the election.

Michael Hollick
Michael Hollick
19 days ago

“Anti-vax fitness gurus.” Is this meant to be pejorative? Because from what I can gather, in the case of covid, they have been proved correct.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
19 days ago

The riots were provoked by the left’s abandonment and contempt for the White working class.

Dick Stroud
Dick Stroud
19 days ago

Worth the read for the the statement: “It’s a world of lanyards, laptops, stale sandwiches and Marks & Spencer cuts for people who get excited when they see Laura Kuenssberg.” Good grief, what a mess.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
19 days ago

Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla are 20 times larger than the seven largest European rivals. These companies were founded by people degrees in electrical engineering, computer science and maths from top universities. Labour considers that employing people with humanities degrees from low grade universities by the state actually increases the economy; it does not . All it does is increase the need for taxation.
The Roman, Mughal and Chinese Empires collapsed because the increase in bureaucracy was greater than the economy could afford.

Point of Information
Point of Information
18 days ago

What is an M&S cut? A cut of meat? A typo for coat (or other)?