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The Labour party is gathering in Liverpool for its first annual conference in government for 15 years.
The party faithful ought to make the most of the occasion. This will be Labour’s 120th annual conference, taking place in the centenary year of the party’s first ever such gathering as a governing party.
A Labour conference for a Labour government is quite rare. Only 33 of 120 such meetings have been staged with the party in power (emergency coalitions apart) and a mere 28 with Labour enjoying an overall majority in the House of Commons. Most Labour conferences have involved shrieking against Tory governments, or sometimes conducting civil wars, not wrestling with the demands of power.
A 174-seat parliamentary majority and the prospect of a sustained period of power ought to have the Labour faithful salivating after the lean years. Hugely abetted by the Conservative meltdown, Keir Starmer delivered a gigantic parliamentary majority in July this year.
Yet Starmer’s arrival on Merseyside will not see the equivalent of the initial adulation which greeted Labour’s last big winner, Tony Blair, when he rocked up at Labour’s Brighton conference celebration in September 1997.
That was the last time Labour returned to power with a landslide after a long and painful absence and Blair arrived at his party’s conference with a staggeringly high 75% of all electors saying they were satisfied with him as prime minister. That was up ten points even from his election win less than six months earlier. Only 13% of the population expressed dissatisfaction.
Labour’s 2024 overall election majority was only 21 seats less than its 1997 triumph yet looked somewhat different. It was the most disproportionate outcome in British electoral history. Winning 63% of the parliamentary seats on 34% of the lowest turnout since universal suffrage demonstrated Labour efficiency, not necessarily enthusiasm for the party.
And for better or worse, Starmer is no Blair. The net satisfaction rating (those “satisfied” minus those “dissatisfied”) for the prime minister has not risen above zero since his huge July election win and fell to -9 last month.
The obvious explanation is that while Blair focused his early prime ministerial years spending faster than a feckless teenager, Starmer is cutting. His removal of winter fuel allowance from pensioners not in receipt of pension credit was a big statement that saving, not spending, is the hallmark of this Labour government. There have admittedly been sizeable pay settlements for some workers but the overall message is one of fiscal rectitude.
The big speeches
Amid hotly contested claims of a financial inheritance £22 billion worse than could have reasonably been anticipated, don’t expect much joy from chancellor Rachel Reeves at party conference. Many are already hiding behind the sofa – or squirrelling money down the back of it – in anticipation of her grim budget on October 30.
With Labour having ruled out increases in income tax, national insurance and VAT, speech-watchers will be trying to glean which other taxes will rise. Better to get the bad stuff over and done with in this early stage of the electoral cycle, of course.
Starmer’s chance to offer a vision of sunlit uplands comes on Tuesday afternoon when he makes his conference speech. Don’t hold your breath. Expect more downbeat notes on the financial situation and the tough decisions that confront the new administration. Yet this needs balancing with more optimistic longer-term aspirations to give party members and the wider watching public hope for what Labour is aiming to achieve beyond brutal accountancy.
The party faithful
What about beyond the big speeches? Despite the gravitation of power to the leadership and the reality that conference policy motions are no longer binding, Labour still takes decision-making at its conference more seriously than virtually every other major party in Europe. A Labour conference is a rally but it is other things too.
Labour sets its own rules at conference. The leadership does not always get its way. One recent example in 2021 saw Starmer successfully negotiating one rule change for party leadership contests but failing to push through another.
This year, there is talk of a proposed rule change that would mean that leadership elections could only take place when there is a “vacancy”, therefore making it impossible for MPs to launch a leadership challenge against a sitting leader.
Much of the action will, however, be on the fringe: I counted almost 700 events in the conference programme. The stuff on the sidelines certainly confirms Labour as a broad church. Attendees can choose between the Labour Friends of Palestine gathering on Monday evening or the Labour Friends of Israel on the Tuesday night.
While it won’t be as joyful as 1997 this year’s Labour conference promises to be partly a big celebratory party – never a problem in Liverpool. And why not, in a city where Labour won 100% of the Westminster seats on 63% of the vote?
Yet the event will also be about acceptance of the burdens of office, a comparative rarity for Labour. Continuity will be evident in one respect at least. Whether Labour is in or out of power, whatever happens is all the fault of the Tories.
Jonathan Tonge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
