Perhaps carried away by the feel good mood at Labour conference, Wes Streeting called for Angela Rayner to return to Government at some point.  “We want her back, we need her back,” he said of one of the party’s most popular and recognisable figures.  https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1972983137719443962 It is just a few weeks since Rayner left Government amid a scandal over stamp duty underpayment on a flat purchase.  Streeting’s team have said the line was an ad lib. After praising the work of social care workers and talking up a fair pair agreement for such workers, he called Rayner “the care worker who became our country’s deputy prime minister”.  [Further reading: Crying racism only hurts Labour] ...

All the instruments we have now agree that Labour is on course to lose the next general election and so this has naturally been a somewhat gloomy conference. But Wes Streeting did manage to rouse delegates with a well-received speech today about what he called “a battle of progressives versus reactionaries”.  Labour’s ancestral enemy, the Conservative Party, didn’t even warrant a mention (though there was an attack on the so-called small-c “forces of conservatism” in the strike-prone British Medical Association).  Instead Nigel Farage was identified as the target of his speech in its first minute. He attacked the Reform leader as a “Mr Money Bags” who can afford private healthcare. To rapturous applause he said: “That man is a con artist posing ...

Less than two weeks ago, the UK government announced it had formally recognised the state of Palestine. Today, at the Labour Party Conference, its members voted to recognise the war in Gaza as a genocide. There were whoops and cheers outside the conference hall after a motion calling on the party to accept the findings of a recent UN report was passed. The report, published earlier in September, found that Israel’s actions in Gaza breach the threshold for four out of the five genocidal acts. This motion was brought by several trade unions and constituency Labour parties, and stewarded by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. The vote passed through conference floor after more than 30 emergency motions in the past week were ...

Shabana Mahmood has named the problem that Keir Starmer only alluded to on Friday when he gave a warning about the “politics of predatory grievance”.  She was more blunt, beginning her speech at conference today with a warning that “patriotism is turning into something smaller, something like ethnonationalism”. She damned those on the right who claim people like her cannot be English because of their heritage. And she said that among the Unite the Kingdom marchers on the streets of London two weekends ago were “heir[s] to the skinheads and the Paki-bashers of old”. Yet the theme of the speech, and the core of Mahmood’s thinking on this fraught subject, is that there is a price to pay for an open and ...

Conference, in June at the GMB Congress I was proud to announce this Labour Government’s full backing for Sizewell C. A landmark investment in a new era of nuclear power.  That plant will employ 10,000 people; create thousands more jobs in its supply chains and produce the energy to power six million homes.  We made that investment, because, when we came into office just over a year ago, this country was faced with a stark choice: investment, or decline. To invest in Britain’s renewal. Or to carry on with the same Tory economics, and the same results.  So for jobs and for pay, for energy independence and for our national security, we chose investment. The Tories wouldn’t invest when they were in power. The ...

Conference, friends. I was raised by a strong single mother who often struggled to put food on the table but fought hard to give her children the best start she could. So I know real working-class hero when I see one. And in recent years, I’ve had the honour of working alongside one of those heroes. Someone who got Britain building again, won new rights for working people, and is a beacon for working women across our nation. Conference, join me in thanking Angela Rayner for all she has done, and all she will continue to do for our movement, our party, and our country. And let us pay tribute to another working-class hero – a titan of our party. He helped ...

Rachel Reeves’ conference speech had a distinctive political aim: to prove that she is a Labour Chancellor. That might seem self-evident, but plenty over the last year have questioned Reeves’ ideological loyalties. From the left, critics have characterised her as a “Treasury drone” who championed “un-Labour” spending cuts. From the right, Reform supporters have cried that Labour and the Tories represent one failed “uniparty”.  The Chancellor’s 40-minute address was designed to undercut both critiques. “Don’t let anyone tell you that there is no difference between a Labour government and a Conservative government” was her repeated refrain. At a conference where Reform’s spectre has dominated this seemed incongruous (the Tories, Keir Starmer has declared, are “dead”). Was this nostalgia for the foe ...

Who is Keir Starmer for? Who is he against? These are the questions that have haunted the Prime Minister throughout a premiership that cabinet ministers believe has desperately lacked political definition. After Mark Carney triumphed as the anti-Trump in this year’s Canadian election, one MP close to No 10 observed: “To win as an incumbent, you need an enemy.” For critics in Labour – Andy Burnham chief among them – Starmer’s enemy has too often appeared to be his own party. The winter fuel payment cuts, the welfare bill, the “Island of strangers” speech – all were deemed “un-Labour”, a critique validated by their eventual withdrawal. Starmer now finds himself in a parlous position among both country and party. “We’re going to ...