It has been 15 years since the Labour party last had a conference while in government. Twenty thousand people are descending on Liverpool, many of whom arrived yesterday, to lobby the government, hash out policy positions … and inevitably partake in terrible karaoke. So what awaits them?
The vibes
The non-stop pessimism from senior figures in government is deliberate for two main reasons, Anushka Asthana says. The first is to hammer home the bleak inheritance left by the previous government. “They want to be clear about where the country is right now – but they want to argue that it is not inevitable”.
“We had this exact same fight in 2010 when the Conservatives blamed the Labour government for the situation the country was in. They laid out a narrative of economic incompetence that became really entrenched and damaged the party for a long time,” she says. The tables have now turned, and it is Labour’s chance to lay out the damaging narrative against the opposition.
The other reason is that hope and optimism in British politics in the past has been drummed up off the back of false promises. “One thing they think in Downing Street very strongly is that they don’t want to give false hope and they want to be, in their view, realistic and honest,” she adds. “They think the electorate has been left cynical and despondent as a result of past governments,” and they want to remedy that. “The public is sick of boosterism”, one Downing Street insider told the Guardian’s Pippa Crerar, that is, a pattern of overpromising and under-delivering which has deeply damaged faith in politicians and politics.
The difficulty is that “a lot of senior figures and MPs are desperate for a more optimistic tone, and they don’t believe that necessarily requires committing loads of money”, Anushka says. They argue that a change of government for the first time in over a decade is reason for hope alone.
Despite the overwhelming response that the tone is too glum, one source has told Anushka “we will adjust the base and the treble but we won’t change the tune”, meaning they still believe their overall framework is the right even if it is not landing particularly well.
It seems as though there has been an acknowledgment that the fatalism of the past few months has to be balanced with some ideas about the future. One source told Jessica Elgot that the plan is to point to “all the things that we can begin this autumn and that is the story we can tell – that we will not allow our inheritance to stop the work of change”.
Resetting the agenda
Starmer has come under significant scrutiny in the past few weeks. The decision to cut winter fuel payments for all but the poorest pensioners created a firestorm, and the prime minister is still battling the reputational damage over donations that he and his wife have accepted amounting to over £100,000 in gifts and freebies since December 2019. Despite No 10’s insistence that the country does not care about this story, voters do in fact care deeply. A poll by More in Common found just 7% of the public think it is acceptable to take donations for senior ministers’ clothing and only 8% think donations of hospitality to politicians are acceptable. “The difficulty is it feeds the narrative that politicians are on the take,” Anushka says. “It’s coming up on the doorstep and it looks hypocritical.” While some of the donations have some semblance of an explanation – as prime minister, Starmer accepted corporate hospitality at Arsenal games because he cannot sit in regular seats for security reasons – others do not. Why, for instance, did he have to accept £2,485 worth of designer glasses?
Furthering the sense of hypocrisy is the zeal with which Starmer attacked Boris Johnson over donations a few years ago, when he dubbed the former prime minister “Major Sleaze”. Similarly, Starmer is batting away criticism over chief of staff Sue Gray’s £170,000 salary, despite attacking the Conservative government over the pay of former Tory chief adviser Dominic Cummings. “At one point, Starmer juxtaposed the pay rise for Cummings against pay freezes for public sector workers – well, now he can expect the Conservatives to juxtapose the pay rise for Sue Gray against the money taken off pensioners,” Anushka says. The government is hoping that conference will be an opportunity to try to take back control of the agenda.
However, Starmer’s casual dismissal of the controversies is beginning to waver. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has said the prime minister and Labour ministers will stop accepting clothing donations because they don’t want voters to believe they are “living very different lives”.
What else can we expect?
As the party seeks to move on from the toxic combination of scandal and misery, a number of policies will be pushed for promotion: planning reform, renters’ rights, rail nationalisation, onshore wind, devolution workers rights and teacher recruitment, among many other issues. However, all of this threatens to be overshadowed by the spectre of the October budget which has been widely pitched as difficult and painful – expect spending cuts and tax rises.
Meanwhile, the left of the Labour party will have a significantly diminished presence this year at the conference. The World Transformed, a leftwing political festival that for the past eight years has happened alongside the Labour conference as a fringe event, has been cancelled this year.
Several senior figures to the left of the party, like former chancellor John McDonnell are suspended from the party, and others are frustrated with the leadership stance on the two-child benefit cap and the winter fuel allowance. As a result, the conference will probably be dominated by delegates from the party’s centrist wing and will be a demonstration of the strength of Starmer’s support across the party. “But I’ve been an observer of politics for a long time and no prime minister can ever maintain control of all MPs, indefinitely,” Anushka warns.
Taken As Red will be released on 26 September and is available to pre-order at the Guardian Bookshop.
