• Prime Minister’s plea for unity undermined by winter fuel payment vote and lingeringconcerns about donations in kind
• Has exuberance turned into hubris?
The Labour conference in Liverpool was supposed to be a jubilant occasion: the party has not convened while in power since Gordon Brown’s tenure as PM in 2009, and it had justachieved a landslide election victory less than three months before.
Instead, many delegates were subdued. Trust in the leader Sir Keir Starmer was undermined by the decision to cut winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners and ongoing disputes over his acceptance of free clothes and internal conflicts among his senior staff.
A non-binding vote in the final hour of the event that led to delegates voting against the winter fuel measure — held while Starmer was 3,000 miles away in New York — brought the awkward gathering to a painful end. Starmer had already made it clear he would ignore any defeat on the issue, but the rejection of his £1.5bn cut — dubbed “austerity mark II” by Unite union leader Sharon Graham — summed up the tetchy mood at this year’s conference.
“The mood is weird,” admitted one party veteran over drinks at a dockside hotel. A former New Labour architect and party grandee said the low-key atmosphere was inevitable, given the serious fiscal position the party had inherited: “It’s a serious mood for serious times.”
One of Starmer’s main jobs was to revive morale in the party after a week of dismal and distracting headlines over clothing donations to cabinet ministers and chief of staff Sue Gray’s pay. Shortly after addressing the conference and in effect delivering a simple message to his party: “Trust me”, Starmer flew to New York to address the UN General Assembly.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting told a Progressive Britain gathering that he believed Starmer regained control of the narrative over the week, delivering a speech blending vision and hope with realistic issues. “The party was inspired by a true vision of the future,” he said.
In private, other party figures were less positive. “Once the Budget is out of the way, we’ve got to put some hope out there,” said Mark Maguire, a former parliamentary candidate in the general election. “People, policy and presentation all need to be fixed. They will fix it but it’s taking longer than it should.”
“So many of our elected officials seemed to be ‘on the take’ that it really affected the public’s trust in the previous government. We can’t afford to make the same mistakes,” he added.
“But of course that doesn’t make a good story. The press only really present negative stories about politicians, and that needs to change, or we’ll continue on this downward spiral.”
Another member she had been disappointed by the series of “unforced errors” made by the leadership over the past two months, adding that many members were “dazed and confused”about what this government was doing.
“I just do not understand how our new Labour government can cut the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and leave the super-rich untouched,” she said.
In his speech Starmer emphasised the necessary trade-offs to fix the economy, such as fiscal discipline and growth through rebuilding national infrastructure. He highlighted his working-class background, aiming to return Britain to “working people”.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves faces pressure to elaborate on these promises in the Budget due at the end of October, including higher taxes on the wealthy to offset benefit cuts for low-income pensioners. Her speech hinted at changes to borrowing rules to boost capital spending.
Liz Kendall, Work and Pensions Secretary, defended the policy in her speech. “We were faced with a £22bn black hole, which the Tories left, we had to act.”
However, union unrest over winter fuel payments is also manifesting itself in ongoing pay disputes: While Reeves was speaking on stage, nurses rejected a 5.5 per cent pay offer and other public sector unions are likely to push Starmer in the coming years to restore the value of their pay.
Business leaders, some of whom had paid £3,000 each to attend a “business day” at the conference on Monday, were also unhappy with Starmer for allegedly talking down the economy and planning a tax increase. Attendees said the event was not worth the cost: “They were greedy and now people are complaining,” remarked a director from a financial services company.
Against this edgy backdrop, post-election celebrations were muted. Long-time loyal party members were left with the feeling that exuberance in power had turned into hubris. When the Red Flag anthem was sung at noon on Wednesday and the party conference ended, many attendees, including Starmer, had already left.
