Andy Burnham, the unquestionable favourite of Conference – say LabourList readers

Critiquing Conference

There seemed to be a consensus amongst most – with our very own Mark Ferguson included – that Labour Party conference was ‘flat’. But we wanted to know what LabourList readers thought about this year’s conference, the final before the general election.

More-or-less in line with what most people seemed to be saying, 31% of LabourList readers thought the Conference was only ‘ok’. However, a total of 32% thought it either went quite well (25%) or very well (7%). Arguably, this is mostly down to the positive support for the hallmark of Miliband’s conference speech: his funding pledge for the NHS.

But things aren’t all so good; more people (35% when the two are combined) said conference either went quite poorly (24%) or very poorly (11%). And 2% said they didn’t know. These negative results could be down to a variety of things but it’s not far-fetched to suggest that Ed Miliband’s speech left quite a few people disappointed – aside the NHS policy, there were no big announcements that people could get excited about (particularly when you take into account Balls’s decision to freeze child benefits).

Over the coming months, the Labour leadership need to do much more to get Labour supporters and the general public excited about what they’ve got to offer for the future of the country…

Conference, it was all about Burnham

A couple of months ago we decided to see what LabourList readers thought of the Shadow Cabinet, from which we created our very own rankings system – Andy Burnham was the unquestionable favourite. In the wake of Conference, after a lot of party activists have the opportunity to interact with MPs, we thought it might be a good idea to see if any of the Shadow Cabinet members made a particularly good impression in Manchester.

Again, Andy Burnham came out on top. By a mile.

He got 56% the vote, and although Ed Balls same in second (perhaps surprisingly after his badly received speech), that was with 6% of the vote – a whole 50% behind Burnham. The other three shadow cabinet members who came in the top five were Maria Eagle (5%), Jim Murphy (5%), and Yvette Cooper (5%).

Burnham’s success surely comes off the back of his role as Shadow Health Secretary – he got numerous standing ovations during his speech at Conference, when he spoke about defending the NHS from privatisation. The massive difference between Burnham’s rating and the rest of the Shadow Cabinet implies that the Labour leadership are right to focus on the protecting the NHS but that when it comes to other policy areas, they need to be doing more.

Don’t worry about defections

But it’s not just the Labour conference that’s been in the news recently. The Tory party conference came to a close on Wednesday – and things aren’t looking so good in the Conservative camp.  The night before the conference kicked off, Tory MP Mark Reckless followed in the footsteps of Douglas Carswell and defected to Ukip.

This is an obvious blow for the Conservatives, but we wanted how LabourList readers thought it would affect Labour. Most people (54%) thought it was a positive thing – it does after all shine a light on the fractures within the Conservative Party and could push more traditional Tory voters to vote Ukip next May, which could have an unintended positive impact for the Labour vote.

However, 34% said that it was neither positive or negative. This could reflect the feeling that if we are to win next May it should be because we’re putting forward a positive alternative for the country, not because the Tories are slowly tearing each other apart.

Having said that, LabourList readers think such defections won’t do any harm to Labour – only 8% think it negative and 5% don’t know. We don’t know about you, but we’re waiting to see who’ll be next to jump ship…

746 people answered the survey this week, that’s to everyone who took part.