Labour conference overshadowed by resignations and leadership manoeuvres
Keir Starmer has walked off the stage after wrapping up a speech some had billed as the most important of his political life.
The lead-up to Labour’s second party conference since their return to power has been less than ideal, with high-profile departures of both high-profile and behind-the-scenes government figures.
Incidentally, one of those figures – Paul Ovenden, who resigned amid reports of offensive remarks about Diane Abbott – was the PM’s long-term speechwriter.
Then there was the conference itself, which threatened to be overshadowed by apparent manoeuvring for the leadership from Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.
The result was a lot of pressure on Sir Keir, a man who isn’t generally renowned as a master orator and communicator.
His speech seemed to go down a storm in the room – but we’ll have to wait and see how it plays to the more important outside world.
Here are a few key takeaways from a big moment for the PM.
It’s hard to pinpoint a moment last year where the country started to turn against Labour following the election.
But I’ve previously suggested that rough road may have started when Sir Keir and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves decided to take a very bleak tone in their first speeches after winning power.
The Conservatives had left the country in a complete state, they argued, and Labour would need to take very unpopular decisions to get it on the right track.
It was a message that played badly to a country exhausted and desperate for some good news after the grim Covid years.
This speech signalled an apparent new approach from the PM – blisteringly optimistic about the ordinary people who make up the country, pointing out a few examples who had made the trip to Liverpool to be in the crowd.
When he was highlighting the work of the man who scrubbed racist graffiti off a Chinese takeaway in York and another man who raised money to reopen a Liverpool library after it was set on fire during riots last year, the PM kept returning to a phrase.
‘Is that really broken Britain?’
It was a deliberate reference to the slogan of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which argues the country is broken and only they can fix it.
That wasn’t the only reference to the party, though – in fact, the lion’s share of the speech was focused on countering Reform’s vision of Britain.
Sir Keir got a thundering ovation for his response to the right-wing party’s new policy of deporting people in the UK with indefinite leave to remain: ‘Mark my words, we will fight you with everything we have.’
Sir Keir’s speech was broadly light on any big policy announcements, preferring to make a political point about the choices faced by the UK.
It made sense – there has been a lot of criticism over the PM’s apparent failure to tell the country a compelling story about what he wants his government to achieve.
But there was one announcement that went down very well in the room – the scrapping of Tony Blair’s nineties-era promise to get 50% of British children to university.
Instead, Sir Keir said he wanted his government to get two-thirds of kids to either go to university, or take gold standard apprenticeship.
Though he didn’t mention them explicitly this time, that’s another poke at Reform who have previously railed against universities and called on more young people to take on trades.
A sea of flags
Walking into the main conference hall at the ACC, it was hard not to notice how many miniature flags there were in the hands of attendees.
The journalists were placed beside the MPs (deliberately, I assume, since they were inevitably going to be cheering the loudest in the room) and I could see Scottish, Welsh, English and British flags waiting to be flapped.
There was a danger this could turn into a version of Tim Farron’s speech at the Lib Dem conference, which the former leader ended by wrapping himself in a St George’s Cross to the strains of Land of Hope and Glory.
Sir Keir brought up the flag repeatedly in his speech, with just about every mention prompting enthusiastic waving and clapping.
It did end up a little more tasteful than the Lib Dems, even if was likely to prove a little much for people tired after a full summer of flag discourse.
Politics Editor
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