Labour conference is packed but the mood is different to Brighton 1997

It is easy to ask “What’s the point of party conferences?”; I’ve written a few such columns myself while covering forty years of conference seasons.

Thanks to security brought in after the Brighton bombing and Labour’s pro-market drift, the genuine answer to that question today is that they are fundraising exercises for the two main parties into which faithful supporters and interested bystanders empty their pockets. Even the Liberal Democrats now boast a healthy array of paying corporate attractions. 

It remains to be seen whether next week in Birmingham will pay off for the demoralised Conservatives. Even with the excitement of four-way leadership hustings, organisers are fearful that they might not match the three to four thousand who turned out for Nigel Farage and UKIP.

There are no such worries for Labour in Liverpool. The nexus of buildings in the conference complex are packed with activists, journalists, business people, diplomats and lobbyists. At least 20,000 pass holders are expected over the five days of conference. The floor of the arena has been filled with pre-fab glass boxes for overflow fringe meetings and receptions and there’s still not enough space. The only booking News UK could get was Sunday afternoon in a characterless grey space, partitioned off. Plenty of cabinet ministers were in attendance nonetheless. 

In spite of the pressing throng inside the secure zone, larger more raucous events – such as the New Statesman party, the Labour Together party and Dawn Butler’s Jamaica party spill out into venues across the city – with fewer grandees present. 

There are so many people here because this is the first conference of Labour in power for fourteen years. Visitors want to see for themselves, to get the measure of the new government and make contacts. As a result, “Freebiegate” has not picked up momentum here. For sure the revelations have done lasting damage to this government and stoked the cynicism of the electorate that “they are all at it”. But it has proven difficult for journalists to take things further while out in public drinking at the same watering holes as their targets.

Already the BBC’s Nick Robinson and LBC’s Lewis Goodall have been called out for also being at some of the celebrations they have been complaining about. My own colleague Kate McCann was invited to Bridget Phillipson’s £15,000 donor-sponsored 40th birthday, but didn’t go. She dug into her inbox for the old invitation and, live on Times Radio, she was able to contradict Phillipson that it had not been advertised as a “work” event. 

Starmer is departing from John Lennon airport to New York hours after delivering his leader’s speech. Preparations for UNGA, the annual United Nations General Assembly, have given Sue Gray the pretext to stay in Westminster. Lady Starmer has returned to London for now. 

With obvious distractions neutralised, the focus is on what the organisers would like it to be – at least inside what we must call the conference “bubble”. That is reinforcing the message that there are difficult times ahead and the Starmer government will not deviate from the “missions” he considers necessary to improve the country.

Speeches from cabinet ministers on this cautious “Change begins” theme have been so unsurprising that they are attracting next to no coverage. 

The audience of interested parties looking on in Liverpool largely accept this reality. For all the clumsiness of Sir Keir’s nightmare honeymoon, he still heads a government with a substantial overall majority in parliament, set to be in office for at least the next four years. The UK can look forward to pre-Brexit levels of political stability.

Serious dissent has largely disappeared. Labour’s row over the cold weather payment cut is a mutual head shake between two sides who regret that it is happening. Well-dressed young people heckling Rachel Reeves about Israel and fossil fuels seemed summoned from central casting allowing her to quip “Labour is no longer a party of protest”, as they were bundled out. Jeremy Corbyn is present only as a photo on the red freebie bags distributed by The Morning Star. This year, Momentum is not bothering to stage its alternative The World Transformed conference to coincide with the main meeting. 

Rachel Reeves is depending on the private sector to deliver “growth”. She promises that her government will set the rules to facilitate it. Largely costless adjustments to regulations make up the bulk of Labour’s boasts for its first few weeks in government. At an international breakfast on “business day”, complaints aimed at the middle-ranking ministers present by ambassadors and corporate representatives were dominated by the relative difficulty of doing business in this country. Labour says it is listening. Yet Starmer and Reeves are built inflexibly, most comfortable imposing “iron discipline”. 

A government’s responsible regulation may feel like more red tape to potential investors. The Liverpool conference venue, which Labour appears committed to in perpetuity, is a microcosm of what could go wrong. There are queues everywhere for inadequate facilities. There are loads of spaces around for paying customers to rent but the conference hall is so small that most of the people here do not have passes to let them sit and listen. This exclusion is rigidly enforced by squadrons of stewards. There are hardly any overflow feeds. The speakers may feel that they are making their point to a packed audience. The crowds at the conference do not hear them. 

Conference veterans are invited to compare Liverpool with Brighton 1997 – the last time an election landslide propelled a Labour leader into Number 10 Downing Street. There was widespread enthusiasm for Tony Blair and New Labour then.Today, Labour is in power by default, winning just one vote in three from an electorate exhausted and appalled by the alternative. 

A vignette sums up the different moods of the times. Tony Blair was the hero at his conference, sprinkling star dust with fleeting appearances at multiple receptions and photocalls. Otherwise closeted in his suite conducting audiences with important people. On the first night of his conference in Liverpool, Sir Keir dined quietly in the hotel restaurant with a couple of aides after catching what he could of Man City v Arsenal on a telly upstairs. 

The public has grown mistrustful of charismatic leadership. At the start of his premiership, Blair had piles more political capital to burn through than Sir Keir does now.