Conference: it’s a family affair

That’s all folks.

The last flyer has been handed out, the last cocktail drunk, the last karaoke song sung, the last furious debate over an arcane issue of procedure has been fought (both sides will tell you they won. No one will understand – or care – what it was they were fighting about except them).

On the way to conference there was quite a lot of nervousness about what the mood would be. The stakes felt higher than ever for the leadership – ‘make or break’ didn’t really even seem to do it justice.

Labour is not in a good place. We are very far down in the polls and conference was at the end of an incredibly chaotic September. We came into conference with an official contest for the role of Deputy Leader and a barely (if at all) veiled challenge to Keir Starmer’s leadership from the popular ‘King of the North’ Andy Burnham.

Read the latest news, analysis and commentary on the 2025 Labour party conference in Liverpool here on LabourList.

The family of it all

Given all this, you might have expected conference to feel very down. But that would be to misunderstand the psyche of the Labour Party members. Especially those who are willing to give up several days of their lives to spend their time at conference. Yes, all our Survation polling tells us that members are worried about the leadership and direction of the Party. But the membership who came to conference were seeking to be reassured as much as they were to vent their frustration. And there was a reasonable amount of that reassurance on offer.

There were reminders of the good things Labour has already done in government. I lost count of the number of time the Worker’s Rights Bill was name checked – and promises that it wouldn’t be watered down were pretty full throated. Labour’s achievements in setting up breakfast clubs, free school meals, 30 hours free childcare, 5 million fewer NHS appointments, scrapping zero hour contracts, protection for renters, GB Energy ang Great British Railways were repeatedly lauded. Members may have been in despair about some of the mistakes made, and they have every right to be. But that’s not a bad list for the first of five years. And this conference served as a reminder that there is more to come and all to play for.

But more than this Labour members found reassurance and joy in community. In coming together. In the family of it all. It is also worth considering that Labour members perennially consider ourselves the underdogs. For example, the best way to guarantee a cheer at any Labour meeting is to rail against the Tory-supporting press (much of which is now at least flirting with Reform). This means that being the genuine underdogs in the polls doesn’t feel as uncomfortable to us as it does to members of the ‘natural party of government’™ – in fact we relish the fight better from that position. (Whether that is a good approach or whether we should try to be more comfortable with the mantle of winners and government I make no comment on here.)

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So the atmosphere at conference was surprisingly buoyant throughout. Which meant that a challenge to Starmer would have taken him to stumble significantly during conference itself to give more of an opening to Burnham – or anyone else who wanted to challenge Keir. Instead, it was Burnham who found himself under fairly sustained attack, with his line that Britain should be “less in hock to the bond markets’ taken and sharpened into a weapon by those defending the PM’s position wounding enough to end talk of Andy’s ambitions – for now.

This isn’t the space to parse that sentiment or whether it is right wing, left wing, Corbynite, Trussite, total madness or a statement of the bleeding obvious. All of these can be true depending on your interpretation. But the fact is that those who were painting Burnham as Liz Truss did so with a discipline and focus that has been sorely missing from Labour comms recently.

We know who we are against

This brings me to the first of my two notes of post-conference caution. The machinery around Starmer seems to be exceptionally good in the service of bringing down an enemy – real or perceived, internal or external. There may be no such thing as Starmerism, but in its deliberate absense it has become definined by what it stands against. Be that the hard left or the Tories the Starmer project has defeated other ruthlessly, only to flail somewhat when there is not enemies but targets to hit; not punches to deliver but legislation. Generally they have been less good at saying what (and who) they are for than who they are against. They define enemies with ruthless precision. And it may be that they are leaning into this undoubted strength by taking the fight to Nigel Farage quite so viscerally as Starmer did in his conference speech.

That conference speech was probably Starmer’s best. I thought his 2023 speech was very good (one might have even said it glittered) but I think this might have been even better. It started slowly and emotionally, with a tribute to the Hillsborough families – a representative of whom had introduced Starmer on stage. Starmer was clearly emotional as he started his speech. This was a speech that had both emotion and personal stories – about his family, brothers and sisters – even his well-protected kids got a mention – all things Starmer has uncomfortably shied away from in the past. Here he was willing to show a little more human and it worked for him.

But it was in defining Labour against Reform that Starmer really showed his passionate side. His peroration against racism and Reform was delivered with a fire that had Labour members whooping and cheering during a long standing ovation. Starmer described the fight against Reform that Labour faces as “a fight for the soul of our country”. This triggered all the elements of the Labour membership that needed triggering.

I watched the speech at a ‘Fabian Society Watch Party’ I was chairing. Afterwards, the audience were asked to rate the speech by five emojis. 

Most of the audience were very firmly in the latter two camps – on the smiley green side of the equation. I wanted to get a bit of a sense check, and asked polling guru Dr Patrick English from YouGov where he thought the public would be if they heard any of the speech. He placed them firmly on the centre image. Which I think might have felt disappointing to the audience. However, he went on to explain that this was actually significant progress as he would have placed them on the furthest left, frowniest of images when the day had started.

Fight of our lives – on all fronts

There are lessons from all of this. The first is that Starmer is more than capable of delivering this stuff when it’s needed. A pessimist might ask why we don’t see more of it, an optimist might simply hope that we will.

There can be an irresistible rhythm to politics that means the kind of energy that goes into a Party conference speech is rarely replicated for one piece of communication throughout the rest of the year. Life – and in Labour’s case – government will inevitably get in the way. The day-to-day gets in the way. But what has been achieved in Liverpool this week could be merely a reprieve for Starmer if the success he has had this week is not learned from and built on. The months ahead are treacherous with a fiendishly difficult budget and what could be an equally hard set of elections in May. Labour will need this Starmer at the helm and this Starmer will need to keep this energy up.

Conference may be done, but as the Prime Minister said yesterday, the fight of our lives has only just begun. And Starmer and his team are going to have to keep up the pace on many fronts;  delivering for members to ensure they don’t become quite so mutinous again; Delivering for – and communicating to – the country in ways that feel like the promised ‘change’ in the title of their manifesto is coming to fruition; and in keeping up the fight against Reform and stopping ceding the fight to them.

it’s a big ask. Labour folk might be leaving Liverpool happier than they were when they arrived. But I don’t think anyone is under any illusion that this is going to be an easy battle.

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