What is this party conference for?

What do Starmer and Reeves need to leave this conference having achieved?

And so, the troops are gathering. The warm wine (water, or if I am lucky Diet Coke, in my case) is ready to be poured, the chicken goujons are probably already congealing on platters. Cheese and ham sandwiches are curling at their edges as you read this.

The build up to this conference has been deeply weird. I wasn’t working in politics in 1997, but I can’t imagine delegates attending the first conference of a Labour government for over a decade felt quite so ambiguous as those making their way to Liverpool today. The bloom had not come off the Labour rose so quickly then.

In fact, while I went to conference once as a delegate in the 1990s (I was in the room for Blair’s Clause 4 speech, but had little understanding of what was going on and what it all meant), my first conference as a professional was in 2002. Labour was in its second landslide term. I was an intern at the Fabian Society. Things were going well – they were even, well, getting better.

My main memories of that time are that the Fabian Society booked a space on Blackpool Pier for their reception which included the use of the carousel. It was quite a useful introduction to the world of politics watching political giants tipsily riding colourful horses around and around in circles. The other thing that stands out was meeting Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey and Alastair Campbell in McDonalds. Whatever happened to those guys?

That was 22 years ago. And except for 2018 when I was in New York celebrating finishing my Master’s Degree, I have been to conference ever since and more than half of these have been held in opposition.

Opposition conferences are probably easier for the people in charge of the Labour Party. Yes, delegates will fight among themselves about the party – this happened in the Miliband years but was supercharged under Corbyn. But I now know enough about Labour Party history to re-evaluate that memory of the Clause 4 debate that baffled the 19-year-old me. And of course – as I have said before – I can quote huge chunks of Neil Kinnock’s seminal 1985 conference speech (and can see vividly Eric Heffer walking off stage and Derek Hatton heckling).

I have been to Lib Dem and Tory conference exactly once each.

The Lib Dem experience was at their nadir during the coalition years and I nicknamed it their ‘Milwall’ conference after the football club’s unofficial slogan “No one likes us, we don’t care”. Lib Dems will generally bore you for hours about the democracy of their conference and how it sets party policy. This moment was when that was largely exposed as a pointless sham for a third party whose policy platform would never be enacted in government. It was – like so many gatherings of troubled clans – more about mutual support and strengthening of will than it was about negotiating the detail of the party’s platform.

The Tory conference was in that moment between their 2015 victory and the EU referendum. They were happy (ish). There wasn’t a whole lot of policy going on, but a fair bit of crowing about electoral success and fighting over Europe. But on the whole, Tory conference feels the most pointless of all. A succession of speeches and posturing for position while the real work – the real politics – goes on elsewhere.

So Labour Conferences are not unique in their weirdness. But, to mangle a favourite quote - all happy parties are alike; each unhappy Party is unhappy in its own way”

I think this ‘politics is not what happens here’ attitude may be the one adopted by the leadership to their own conference. The Party faithful are, from the soundings I have taken, in two places about their feelings.

There is a joy in victory – and that will be reinforced throughout. Expect a lot of stirring video of new MPs toppling Tories (look out for Dan Norris MP who toppled Jacob Rees Mogg – the moment the election was officially clinched - and Terry Jermy who took Liz Truss’s seat and last remaining shred of relevance and dignity as stars of the fringe reception circuit).

But Labour’s summer of doom and gloom has not inspired members – many of whom were already feeling bruised over the pre-election deselection shenanigans. Not just those in the seats concerned, but members more widely who both didn’t like the way the action to disempower them had happened but equally didn’t like the way it was communicated through the press as a power struggle in which their agency was, at best, an inconvenience to be sidestepped or, at worst, an immoral and malign force to be defeated.

Members worked really, really, really hard to get Labour elected. My sense is that however uneasy they are about some of the narrative of government, this week will still feel like a celebration of that. Tribalism will kick in. Triumphalism will kick in. The Tories have been kicked out. There is good stuff happening that can – and will – be pointed to.  

But that Labour is going into it’s first conference in government for nearly a decade and a half and there is even a question as to how celebratory it is going to be should be, but probably won’t be, a concern to the leadership.

I know that Things Can Only Get Better is not the song du jour (though I strongly expect to hear it many many times over the next few days) but the truth is that this conference has to have that spirit of optimism and hope even as the government has spent the summer trying to limit expectations.

Labour’s operation is lacking two things at the top that are worrying because until they sort this out they will not be functioning at their best. And they need to be on top of their game if they are going to achieve even half of their best ambitions.

The first area where Labour at the top are failing is in their professionalism as they do a sharp handbrake turn from scrappy opposition to power. I would add as an addendum that this has not been the case at the other levels of the party. I’ve complained openly about the party in the past, but I have had cause to deal with conference services A LOT over the last fortnight and they have been SUPERB. Genuinely the last few weeks would not have been possible to get through without them.

But this is being let down by a handful the staffers at the very top.

Full disclosure: a job came up in the Labour Party – Director of Policy Communications – that I would have been excellent at and several people sent me the JD and encouraged me to apply. Among them were MPs, senior trade unionists and my Dad. Now, I would have been a massive, massive long shot. I doubt I would have been shortlisted never mind got the job. But I did think about it long and hard. Because I do care about the Party and I am really good at communicating policy in a human and effective way (that’s why my business is called Political Human after all!)  It might have been a way I could make an offer to help in a really good way. Put my money (well their money I suppose – it’s a paid role!) where my mouth is and my skin in the game.

In the end, I didn’t apply. I have worked in dysfunctional workplaces and they have a very real effect on me. I am not the kind of person who can switch off at the end of the day. I feel work tensions deeply and keenly. And I just didn’t want to work in the kind of workplace where people don’t just constantly bitch about each other (all workplaces have that to an extent) but do so in the pages of the national press. No thanks.

This isn’t to say that whoever is appointed to that role won’t be fantastic. Probably considerably better than I could ever have been. But it does mean that the public face of the non-elected Labour Party put me off. So the important question is: what other, greater, talent is it repelling?

Starmer’s number 10 operation are great at getting press coverage. Just never for the stuff they are doing, but how they all feel about each other. We are all living not through their national politics but their office politics and this needs to be addressed as a matter of some urgency. Party because it is putting talent off. But mostly because the overall story of this government so far is far too dominated by the lack of professionalism in so many different ways. They need to demonstrate professionalism and competence on the the small stuff to even get a sniff of a chance to deliver on the big things.

Dumb shit happens and it happens most when you’re thrust into a new position. But there absolutely should have been someone in Starmer’s operation who could have told him – instinctually – that the freebie stuff was dumb shit and would cost far more than simply buying your own clothes and glasses would in the long run. There should have been someone with the authority that when that was said it was listened to.

More immediately when it comes to this conference, Labout lacks a serious narrative into which they have poured a vacuum of gloom. I have absolutely no problem with the Labour government blaming the Tories for a poor inheritance. It’s good politics which also happens to be largely true. But setting out the landscape on which you are building is not enough without describing the cathedral you will build. I get that it’s hard. But you haven’t been elected to moan about your jobs. You’ve been elected to do them.

Labour members – in our social media age more than ever – are a conduit to a wider electorate. They deliver your leaflets and share your WhatsApp messages and Facebook posts. They do so more when they are inspired to do so by your rhetoric and narrative. They need to leave conference with an answer on the doorstep as to what Labour is for and what they are going to achieve.

When I train campaigners, I often ask them to give me a vision of what the world will look like when they achieve their aims. This is, surprisingly frequently, the hardest thing I ask them to do. Campaigners and politicians are really good at telling you what they are going to do. What actions they are going to take; what policies they are going to enact. But they are all a lot less good at telling you what difference those actions or policies are going to make.

By this I don’t mean quoting stats about figures (XXXX policy will bring XXXX children out of poverty) I mean telling the story of the child lifted out of policy and making clear to people what the world we are working towards looks like.

Until Starmer, Reeves and the rest can tell this story, they will fail to keep the essential spark of optimism that a change in government can produce alive. They will struggle to achieve a change they cannot properly articulate. And they will leave the narrative about their government in the hands of those who have more malign interpretations.

Last year, Starmer’s speech got a little glitter by accident. This year, they must create their own stardust.

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