LABOUR CONFERENCE.
The country needed cheering up after the Starmer gloom. Andy Burnham provided it assisted by a great summer. But now as the leaves fall and the conference season is underway, reality is setting for the chirpy Prime Minister.
Welcome, but limited help, with elements of the cost of living are being overwhelmed by the ever-rising price of petrol. Motorists are already feeling it, but it will soon filter through into everything we buy. There is little prospect of the oil crisis easing. The damn fool of a President that is Trump has opened Iranian eyes to their power over the Straits of Hormuz. Meanwhile Saudi Arabia, despite its vast wealth, has proved a useless ally to Yemen and has allowed the Houthis rebels to threaten the entrance to the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
We may add to the list of “events” which Burnham can’t control, the Ukraine war, Chinese competition and AI which could mean we are in one of the last party conference seasons ever.
However, the Prime Minister could gain control over welfare spending, immigration and increase
defence spending to 3% now. Ministers have invented a new target of 3.5% by 2035 thinking we won’t notice that 3% by 2030 has been dropped.
Labour Party conference organisers will want to make the Liverpool gathering a celebration of the new leader. Instead, it should be taken as an opportunity to spell out some home truths to the unions and members that the welfare bill and triple lock are unsustainable. The bond markets are edging towards the view of Andy Haldane (former Bank of England governor and no enemy of Labour) that we have an old-fashioned tax and spend socialist government on our hands.
The charge is that the Prime Minister revealed the soul of the Labour Party when he said that national security can’t come before social security. It is perfectly respectable for Labour MPs to want to lavish more spending on welfare and run up the debt burden and to resist spending on weapons of war. It is respectable but unsustainable at the present time. Burnham should spell it out in Liverpool but don’t hold your breath.
TORY CONFERENCE.
Kemi Badenoch will go her conference in Birmingham with her approval ratings rising.
However, she will note that, despite all the financial storm surrounding Reform UK, her right-wing rivals are neck and neck with Labour, three points ahead of the Conservatives in the latest opinion polls. The Tories grassroots organisation has been weakened by years of defeat and now faces the prospect of being matched by the crypto fuelled Reform UK.
On the fringe of the conference there will be calls for right wing unity, but the enmity is too great. Badenoch will hope that her move to the right in the recent shadow ministerial reshuffle will be enough to hold the line, in the hope that Reform will collapse.
LIBERAL DEMOCRATS AND GREENS.
These two parties are hovering around 11% in the polls. They have both been damaged by trends in British politics since the General Election. First the Lib Dems were no longer the only party of protest following the green surge, now the Greens have suffered because of an influx of Corbynites and their associated policies.
The Green conference comes days before the Holborn and St Pancras by election. The Green leader Zack Polanski hopes to take Keir Starmer’s
old seat and the gathering in Brighton will be a convenient showcase providing it doesn’t collapse in procedural chaos.
The Lib Dems will also be in Brighton this weekend. Sir Ed Davey is a principled man in a world that badly needs them. He has stood up to Trump, chided the government over social care, and argued the case for rejoining the Single Market. Yet one feels the Lib Dems are treading water, and this might be his last conference as leader.
