Summary
This opinion piece is my personal analysis of the Labour Party conference in Liverpool that ran last week. I am providing my critical response to the highly confusing optimism that was displayed there. I explore the angry reactions from a range of people who are extremely upset with the current performance of this incumbent government.
The Labour Party have just concluded their annual nationwide party conference, which ran from Sunday, September 28 and Wednesday, October 1. Elected representatives (MPs, MSPs, and MSs) and party activists gathered in Liverpool to hear some highly publicised speeches from the most senior Labour politicians.
The crowd appeared to be in good spirits. This is despite Labour currently trailing badly in the opinion polls, losing to Reform UK in most surveys released in the last five months. Therefore, it’s perhaps understandable that the incumbent British prime minister used his keynote address to take harsh swipes at his greatest political rivals.
Keir Starmer fiercely argued to his audience that the Reform leader, Nigel Farage, is somebody who “doesn’t like Britain”, nor does he “believe in Britain”. These attacks don’t stop there, though.
In recent days and weeks, Starmer and others in Labour have passionately expressed their disdain and disgust with Farage’s “racist” and “immoral” plans to abolish indefinite leave to remain and deport tens of thousands of people living legally in the UK.
Yet, despite this firm anti-populist message being pushed, Keir Starmer’s conference speech was not a million miles away from the tough talk on immigration used by those on the right of politics.
Addressing the conference, he said his own party had placed too much faith in globalisation and strongly sympathised with a woman from Oldham who was upset about a group of Eastern European men keeping their street in a poor state.
This suggests that the current administration has been attempting to distance themselves from the New Labour government of Tony Blair, especially as Keir Starmer has now done away with Labour’s target of having 50 per cent of British young people going into university, as introduced by Tony Blair in 1999.
Instead, Starmer spoke about two-thirds of Britain’s youngsters going either to university or onto an apprenticeship. He explained that his belief in expanding the vocational and technical pathways for the next generation was caused by his father’s practical work as a toolmaker.
Sir Keir staunchly disputed the claim that Britain was “broken” and insisted that he would never allow the state to lose control of the economy and force “working people” to “pay the price”.
So, it seems that those who are leading this country seem to think very highly of their selves. They believe that they are on the right side of history, where their sternest critics
on the left and on the right are horribly wrong. But it would be demonstrably false to argue that the public thinks things are going well with this government.
On a BBC News article that provided readers with “five takeaways from Starmer’s conference speech”, the comments were extremely negative. “He is useless. The party is useless. They lie. They blame others. They are finished at [the] next election”, writes one person. A second shares this sentiment, arguing that “the damage they will do in the meantime will plunge us into years of recession”.
So, it should be clear by now that the words and actions of the Labour Party in the last week or so are going down incredibly badly, and the party is becoming increasingly unpopular with the electorate. This is reflected in the latest national opinion polling, as a recent More in Common poll has given Reform UK a ten-point lead over Labour and the Conservatives.
It would appear, therefore, that things are not looking good at all for a party that won a 174-seat majority in last year’s UK general election and is now almost guaranteed to lead a one-term government for the next four years.
