Five Takeaways from Labour Party Conference
by Tom Hamilton, Director, WPI Strategy
1) Labour thinks it can win…
It is not unusual for a Labour conference to be overshadowed by outside events; it is less common for it to be overshadowed by a sudden economic crisis that is uncontroversially the result of a set of Conservative decisions. The falling pound, and the aftermath of Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax-cutting, borrowing fiscal statement at the end of last week, has given Keir Starmer and shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves in particular plenty to get their teeth into. It is a lot easier to portray yourselves as the party of economic competence when all you have to do is point at the other lot. The conventional wisdom that Liz Truss would probably get some sort of polling boost on becoming Prime Minister has turned out to be as wrong as the conventional wisdom so often is. But the underlying confidence in Labour’s ranks that it might actually be in a position to win an election has been building for some time, and hasn’t come out of nowhere. It isn’t just Labour activists thinking this way: the exhibition area at Liverpool’s conference centre has more, and more expensive and visually striking, commercial stands than Labour has seen for some time, and the business day sold out very quickly. It’s noticeable that ambitious would-be Labour MPs are circling the kinds of constituencies Labour hasn’t come close to winning in years: Wycombe, currently held by Brexiteer Steve Baker, is particularly keenly-contested, and anything with a Tory majority under 10,000 is seen as a plum seat. This has, to put it mildly, not always been the case.
2) …and that’s more daunting than they thought it was
Labour MPs, advisers and activists don’t want to get ahead of themselves, but conversations are already dominated not so much by questions of whether Labour can win as by worries about the economic inheritance a Labour government will face. If the current crisis – like the winter of discontent, Black Wednesday and the 2008 crash – precipitates a sustained collapse in support for the government of the day, then it is already unclear whether Labour will be able to spend as much as it would like or avoid tax rises as much as it would like. In the short-term, Labour can profit from the Tories’ woes, both by simply pointing and laughing and by promising reversals of their most unpopular policies. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were quick to say that they will reinstate the 45p tax rate for those earning over £150,000, and to bank the money into a populist pledge to recruit more NHS staff. And while there is no explicit commitment to re-raise corporation tax, there is little doubt that Labour will promise this sooner or later; it can’t afford not to. But Starmer was less willing to commit to reversing the cut in income tax from 20p to 19p. In the longer term, Labour is already trying to move away from a focus on tax and spend, and towards an alternative vision for growth.
3) Labour wants to be green, but not soft
Labour’s conference slogan, “A greener, fairer future”, raised some eyebrows, with some of Starmer’s critics on the Labour right expressing concerns that it sounds like wishy-washy Milibandism, and others simply worried about the incongruity of a slogan containing the word “green” that is printed only in red and white. One whispered suggestion was that it was a late replacement for a different slogan, “A fresh start”, which was deemed inappropriate so close to the accession of King Charles III – a rumour so daft that it might even be true. But the greenery is linked to a vision in which achieving net zero is simply a by-product of fostering long-term economic transformation: Rachel Reeves’ sovereign wealth fund to invest in, and crowd in private investment in, green industry; shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds’ industrial strategy; new commitments on skills training: all are geared towards maximising UK competitiveness and leadership in green technology as the basis of sustainable growth. And the centrepiece of Starmer’s speech, the announcement of a publicly-owned Great British Energy company (an announcement which, among other things, spikes criticism that he has rowed back from his leadership campaign pledges), was couched in terms of ensuring the UK doesn’t fall behind other countries which have a stake in UK infrastructure, rather than in proclaiming the virtues of public ownership as such.
4) Vision beats policy
Keir Starmer’s speech was the most substantive laying-out yet of his vision for what a Labour government under his leadership will look like, with green investment as the centrepiece and notably less detail on public services or the cost of living. In fact, the publicly-owned energy company announcement was the only new policy in the speech, and there have been relatively few across the conference as a whole. Labour is keen to have a small number of significant announcements rather than a large number of small ones, even if this has the downside of giving some shadow cabinet members relatively little to say. If they are smart, they can win applause with things that have already been announced, or more or less announced (see shadow Transport Secretary Lou Haigh’s pledge that railway operating companies will be taken back into public ownership when their franchises expire, which has been in successive Labour manifestos since 2017). Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules still apply, and have become an unexpected dividing line with Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng; they do place significant constraints on what shadow cabinet members can get signed off. Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s school breakfast clubs announcement has some new spending attached to it, but that’s about it; even if some shadow cabinet members find this frustrating, it gives the party platform more definition at the expense of their own profile.
5) Unity is boring
Sometimes, Labour conference is dominated by intra-party arguments. This year’s has not been, and even where the leadership has lost debates – as it did over electoral reform, where party members and the unions overwhelmingly backed changing the voting system while bemused onlookers wondered whether this should be a top-priority for an opposition party with an 18-point lead – this has not been either a big media story or a big source of tension. Journalists were quite obviously hoping for some kind of interesting story to report around the singing of the National Anthem at the start of Sunday’s first session, but it passed without heckling or visible complaint. And unlike last year, Starmer’s speech provoked no heckling or boos – except some good-natured ones at the very start when he made a joke about Arsenal being top of the league. Labour’s poll lead, and the dominance of the real-world story about the Truss-Kwarteng-inspired collapse in the pound, means that there is no serious or even non-serious challenge to Starmer’s position, and that interventions on tax and PR, and refusals to rule out future leadership bids, from the likes of Andy Burnham are treated as amusing rather than provocative. The lack of visible dissent – and not because of overly-aggressive stamping out of it, but because the dissenters clearly cannot be bothered for the time being – has been as striking as the usual yelling. Keir Starmer is often criticised for being a bit boring. As Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are demonstrating, there are worse things to be.