Jonathan Todd

Saturday 20 September, Labour Party Conference Diary

Train heave on to Euston”, once sang one of Manchester’s favourite sons. My reverse journey began with a blizzard of Cabinet Ministers: Hilary Benn, suited and booted, and seemingly fretting about his ticket; John Hutton, relaxed in both dress and in his ability to emerge from a long queue at W. H. Smith’s with a newspaper in time for his train. He may have read the Mirror editorial proclaiming that Labour faces “one of the most important conferences in its proud history”. Many of the pivotal moments in Labour’s history have been forged in the fiery furnace of conference. So the journey north was charged with anticipation and occasion.

Morrissey called upon arrival in Manchester. This was Helen, my CLP Secretary, not Stephen Patrick, with a tip on navigating the secure zone. First I had to contend with a taxi journey to my B&B which was extended by “the loonies marching,” as my driver put it. I was content to take this focus group of one as the authentic voice of Manchester’s working class.

Having taken in Salford Quays, emblematic of the change reaped in this part of the country over the past decade, I eventually arrived at the London Labour reception to hear Len Duvall speak of the change London experienced over the same period. Later at the New Statesman reception, I spotted Hilary Benn wearing the same black suit and red tie combination he had on earlier at Euston. However, Steve Reed, Leader of Lambeth Council, was one of the few males at the Labour London reception not wearing a suit. I think this makes him officially cool.

Certainly Gordon Brown was a model of cool composure as he spoke after Duvall on the political and economic challenges before him. He was also kind enough to sign a bottle of whisky for the raffle. My good fortune means this is now destined to sit in my kitchen next to a champagne bottle signed by Tony Blair. I am not sure whether this makes me a champagne or whisky socialist (that probably depends on the time of day) but Alan Johnson is undoubtedly correct in saying that “Blairites versus Brownites is so last century”. Too many party debates still seem trapped in this tired paradigm. Hopefully a new dynamic will more clearly emerge within the party over the coming days.

Sunday 21 September, Labour Party Conference Diary

Early afternoon Sunday, in the sunshine outside Manchester Central, a sticker is thrust upon me by Richard Caborn. It reads, “Let’s go 4th. The campaign for a Labour fourth term.” By 7 pm Ben Page of Ipsos-Mori had told a fringe audience that there was only a 5 to 10 per cent chance of this objective becoming a reality. No wonder David Miliband appeared at a Fabian fringe that lunchtime in the grand and beautiful setting of Manchester Town Hall to argue that the biggest challenge for this conference is to tackle the sense of fatalism surrounding the party.

The awful polling that appeared in the morning’s Observer tended to focus conference debate on the short term tactics that may alleviate Labour’s predicament. The longer term strategy to be followed, however, should take its inspiration from the insightful and biting analysis offered by Matthew Taylor at the same RSA-BBC fringe that Ben Page covered in a cloak of doom. Page gave a powerful presentation that set out why the business of politics is difficult in the face of such widespread, seemingly contradictory beliefs as 74 per cent of the public thinking that we are heading for environmental disaster unless we change track at the same time as 59 per cent saying they are doing absolutely nothing about it.

Taylor began his response to Page by wryly noting that there is no better time to conclude that the electorate is stupid then when we are 20 points down in the polls. While acknowledging that politics will become ever less relevant unless the challenges set out by Page are addressed, Taylor ultimately provided a defiantly optimistic anecdote to the fatalism bemoaned by Miliband. The future, for Taylor, need not be one of bowling along (as in Robert Putnam’s celebrated tome) but can be one of collectivist solutions being applied to emerging political challenges. Just as attendances at football matches, cinemas and restaurants have reversed trends of long historical decline by revivifying their offerings for changed times, so too collectivist political and public policy institutions can have enhanced relevancy if these institutions can be designed in a way people respond to.

Generating this response is all the more important in an era when behavioural change is ever more a precondition of policy success. I headed for the Fabian reception buoyed by the kind of Manchester swagger, celebrated by Andy Burnham in his address to the Urban Hub; a confidence instilled by the richness of Taylor’s vision that in spite of our disastrous polling the Labour Party remains engaged in an inspirational and vital endeavour.

Tuesday 23 September, Labour Party Conference Diary

Gordon Brown’s big speech was sometimes more mangled by the subtitling on the TV screens in Manchester Central than John Prescott’s most garbled comments. Pieties became “pie yots”. Applause was “platz plau”. This kaleidoscopic interpretation parallels another conference reality: simultaneously breathing in a news event and being less aware of the news than on a normal working day. It seems to take a special effort at conference to seek out a TV to see how events are being reported (and fringes, receptions and bars are always more attractive to me). In contrast, in this highly networked, 24 hour news age, news coverage often seems virtually drip fed to us in more normal circumstances. The view from conference is one that is sufficiently close-up and worms-eye to create both a visceral sense of occasion and doubt as to the completeness of this perspective.

Brown’s speech inspired a sincere sense of purpose, determination and hope amongst the conference attendees that I spoke to. However, as I made my way to an IPPR fringe on the future of progressive politics, I was entirely in the dark about the extent to which this mood was reflected in media coverage and public opinion.

At the IPPR event Peter Kellner drew warm applause for the observation that there is a good case to be made for Labour changing our leader, as there is also a good case to be made for not doing so, but the worst of all worlds is created by the hobbled, half-way house that recent snipping and manoeuvring have created. He, consequently, implored Charles Clarke, another panellist, “to put up or shut up”. The presence of Sky News’ Glen Oglaza in the audience was my one window on the media. He enquired of Clarke whether Brown’s speech would resonate beyond Manchester. Clarke declined to answer directly but gave a hint as to his future intentions by saying to Kellner that he could take this to mean that he was “shutting up”.

John Denham and John Harris completed the cast of panellists, with all being fulsome in their praise of Brown’s speech. John Harris said that he received a text from a member of the government boasting that, “it was the most openly progressive speech he has ever made”. Harris argued that New Labour has pursued progressive ends by stealth but that popular concern about financial convulsions and their impacts created space for more overtly doing so. The government should rise to this “progressive moment” was his message.

Whether “progressive moment” is entirely the right description for a flirtation with a calamity of Great Depression proportions is a moot point. Certainly the political context seems to be rapidly evolving – and in ways potentially to Labour’s advantage. The end of the “Regan/Thatcher era” is being spoken of by such economic luminaries as Paul Krugman. One doesn’t need to be excessively enamoured with Marxist-structuralist reasoning to see economic events as forging a new path for politicians to follow. Catherine Mayer of Time argued at a fringe on Monday evening that this changed backdrop was to Barack Obama’s advantage in the presidential election but that Labour had so far failed to capitalise on the political opportunity that is presented to us, as a party more comfortable with market regulation and intervention than the Conservatives, by a much less laissez-faire popular attitude to laissez-faire economics.

Labour’s best hope would seem to be to have the grumblers/plotters (you decide) “shut up” and to unite behind Brown’s attempt to make a better first of this opportunity. As Brown takes forward the “new settlement” that his speech promised, we should work to ensure that the media is ultimately left to conclude that this also yielded a new Gordon; a popular, respected and General Election winning Prime Minister.