Labour Conference 2013 is the Cost of Living conference – but what does that mean? And will it work?

It won’t be a particular surprise to anyone who has watched Labour’s messaging shift over the summer towards “cost of living”  – but this year’s conference is being pitched as a cost of living conference. Senior Labour figures have been pointing in recent days to a document produced and released over an otherwise long quiet summer entitled “David Cameron’s out of touch. You’re out of pocket” (which you can read here).

That’s likely to be a phrase that’s repeated time and time again over the coming week.

The key points of that document – as I wrote at the time it was released, are:

• real wages falling in every region
• the UK at the bottom of the G7 table with it comes to income growth since 2010
• inflation has consistently been above 2%
• and perhaps most shockingly of all, real wages have fallen 36 out of 37 months under Cameron

But as I also said at the time, the Labour leadership are running out of time to actually convince people that they can make a difference on any of this:

“The last page of the party’s living standards dossier, after the rigorous and damning research that has come before, is one hell of a damp squib. It outlines what “One Nation Labour” would be doing to boost people’s living standards. That’s the plan anyway – most of the policies listed by the party are either vague or pretty small beer. They’ve all been announced already – not that the voters have noticed.

Energy policy – vague.

Rail fares – vague.

Standing up for families in the private rented sector – vague.

None of this sounds like a policy that is going to make a sizeable difference to that £6,660 hole Cameron has dug for each and every one of us. Labour’s critique of the government’s failures are getting more nuanced – but party policy is still nowhere near expansive or radical enough to meet the task ahead.”

Since then though, we’ve had some clearer hints on how Labour is planning to tackle the cost of living:

Tackling underemployment and unemployment: the party have already made noises about “full employment” – which if successful could be transformative for the country and the economy, but at present it’s just an aspiration. There are also plans for a compulsory job guarantee for the unemployed, but that needs to be more expansive – Stephen Timms alluded to this when he wrote about underemployment recently.

Rail fares: Labour has been talking about cutting the cost of rail fares for a while – and again recently as a cost of living issue, but the policy plans are still vague. Is it because the party is holding back an announcement for conference – taking the railways into public ownership perhaps?

Bedroom tax: It’s now looking increasingly likely that Labour will announce plans to repeal the Bedroom Tax. That might not be a cost of living issue for everyone – but is certainly is for those who are hit by it – and if it costs more money that is saves, which seems likely, then surely it’s a no-brainer?

Housing: This is the big one – Ed Miliband has talked increasingly – especially at the TUC last week – about the need to build more affordable housing. That’s popular with the public, even if it means more government borrowing in the short term. The target should be a million affordable homes built in the next five years.

The fact is though, Ed first made the case on the cost of living over two and a half years ago in this speech. If this is such a compelling argument (and Carys Afoko convincingly argued recently that it was) then why on earth has it taken Labour almost three years to maker it the core focus of our messaging? Banging on about a “cost of living crisis” is all well and good – but it only means something if you have the ideas and the policies that will actually deal with it.

That’s what conference needs to be about. No pressure, Ed.

Update: A Labour MP contacts me to say:

Cost of living conference but an MP pass is £174! So I am not going. 

It’s a fair point – conference is expensive for MPs, nevermind members and councillors (who pay the same rate as MPs)