Hope Again screams Labour’s 2026 conference slogan. This is political code for ‘thank heavens we’re shot of Starmer and Reeves’.
At last year’s conference they all gushed about how wonderful Sir Keir had seen off that idiot Andy Burnham. Now it’s the other way round.
‘What a difference 12 months makes,’ cried oddball Ellie Reeves, Attorney General, rejoicing that the last lot had been ditched. One of them was her sister Rachel.
The slogan is everywhere: on podiums, walls, pillars, badges, stickers, even on lavatory urinals. Party dignitaries work it into their speeches. Everyone has been told to say ‘hope’ and to look zingy when saying it.
Pat McFadden, Work and Pensions Secretary, did his best but he is not made for optimism. Nor, for that matter, were a couple of closet anti-Semites outside the security area’s main entrance. They were holding a banner saying ‘Zionists control the Labour Party‘.
The hope thing was also a test for Bridget Phillipson, sacked as education secretary but now chairman of the party. Scary Bridget is not terrific at smiling. It’s like asking a gerbil to whistle.
She gave one of her acidic speeches, all monochrome glumness, her face ivory under a glistening helmet of jet-black hair. ‘Bringing hulp back to Britain,’ muttered Bridget. Hulp. That’s how she pronounces hope. The next election was going to be ‘a choice between hulp and fear’.
Bridget Phillipson, sacked as education secretary but now chairman of the party on the first day of the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool
Did someone off-stage instruct her to smile at this point? Her lean lips cracked and her gaze darted. The smile of an indigestive turtle.
Eyelashes Andy had got the day under way with a strangely myopic interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
He was, you see, without his glasses, so spent much of the time peering at her through narrowed eyes. Perhaps he hoped it would make him look brainy.
‘I won’t dodge the difficult questions,’ averred Eyelashes. Laura, very much the senior partner in these exchanges, did indeed ask tricky questions about Heathrow airport expansion and welfare spending. Mr Burnham dodged both. On old people’s care there came a defiant hint that taxes would rise. He grumbled about being constrained by the 2024 manifesto. I’d put ten bob on the next general election happening soonish.
In the conference hall the platform officials consisted of several stolid, bald chaps who sat under that ‘HOPE AGAIN’ logo. Lots of people were leaving their jobs. Huge bouquets were presented to, among others, the party’s general secretary, Hollie Ridley, who has been replaced by someone less southern.
Hollie became almost weepy. Her successor is a man called Fortune – good name for a socialist. The moment his appointment was approved, Hollie vanished through a black hole in the back wall. She’ll probably re-emerge in the House of Lords.
We heard a complaint that conference voting forms were hard for dyslexic members to read. The unions were in strong voice, giving burpy cheers when a barely literate Unite comrade called Dave chaired a session.
Rebecca from Bristol, in red, off-the-shoulder ball gown, was told ‘you can’t make a reference back’. One of the bald blokes thought the plural of reference back was ‘reference backs’.
The slogan is everywhere: on podiums, walls, pillars, badges, stickers, even on lavatory urinals
The new deputy leader, Lucy Powell, was given ten minutes, nine more than she merited. As Education Secretary she intends to ‘take down barriers’ in schools. Bang go exams.
Ms Powell spoke of the Government’s relaunch under Mr Burnham as ‘this second hearing’. She was one of many to talk about the next election. It has been just two years since the last. The activists heard her dribblings largely in silence. They preferred the more thrusting, vengeful manner of First Secretary Louise Haigh.
But the best speech of the day was made by another bald man: the party’s departing treasurer, Mike Payne. He spoke in favour of ‘astringent’ accountancy and of ‘achieving a balanced budget’. It was desirable for colleagues to show ‘a culture of collective accountability for the finances’, he said, adding: ‘We must always live within our means.’
Make that man Chancellor.