Party conference season in 2020 may have meant online debates and live-streamed speeches instead of karaoke and warm white wine – but politics must go on, and it was still possible to discern a few winners and losers from the past three weeks.
Up:
Keir Starmer: the Labour leader used a series of interviews, and his set-piece conference speech – delivered from an arts centre in Doncaster – to press home his chosen themes of patriotism and Labour values: “Decency, fairness, opportunity, compassion and security.”
There was little solid policy; but he had a few memorable lines, including putting voters on notice that Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto will “sound like the future arriving”, and stressing his determination to win.
He continues to face a revolt from the disgruntled leftwing of the parliamentary party, not least his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, whose presence might have been much more noisily felt if members had been gathered in Liverpool, instead of around their laptops. And there is a growing clamour for him to put some policy flesh on the bones of his electoral strategy.
But his team were pleased that Starmer was not completely crowded out of the headlines by the latest set of Covid curbs, announced on the same day as his speech.
Douglas Ross: The Conservatives’ 37-year-old new leader in Scotland has only been an MP since 2017, but his conference speech to the Tories’ virtual event on Saturday cemented his reputation as one to watch.
His charismatic predecessor Ruth Davidson never shied away from telling her party home truths about how it is perceived north of the border – and Ross stuck with that tradition.
He delivered a stark warning to party members and colleagues at Westminster that their own “defeatism and disinterest” could allow Scotland to break away, which would, he said, “wash out the union flag”.
The SNP’s conference is yet to come, but Nicola Sturgeon may well pick up on some of Ross’s candid admissions about his own party’s neglect of Scotland.
Amanda Milling: The Conservative co-chair, who sits in Boris Johnson’s cabinet, spent much of the past few months on a low-key tour of many of the constituencies the Tories gained in 2019, meeting the new intake and trying to work out what they need to do to hold onto their seats.
Last week she was everywhere, welcoming party members to the virtual conference with a cheery “hi everyone” and encouraging them to enjoy conference events with chilled white wine from their own fridge.
Milling announced that the party will set up a new HQ in Leeds, as a signal of its determination to hold on to the “red wall” seats. Asked by House magazine what new MPs should do to win next time around, she said, “work really, really hard”.
Sian Berry and Jonathan Bartley: In polling terms, the Green party is not currently in such a happy place, bumping along at 5% or below. But in another way, they are arguably as influential as ever, with long-standing party policies including reshaping the economy on sustainable grounds, and a universal basic income, being seriously discussed by the bigger parties – and in the case of the latter, adopted by the Lib Dems.
The Greens are phlegmatic about such imitation, but confident their time could be coming. The main conference speech by the party’s popular (and newly re-elected) co-leaders, Sian Berry and Jonathan Bartley, explained how the government response to coronavirus showed that “a different world might be possible”. They also believe that with Keir Starmer taking Labour more to the centre, the space to explain such ideas is their own.
Down:
Boris Johnson: The build-up to conference season could hardly have been worse for the prime minister, with the second wave of the pandemic crashing over the UK, just as his own troops are becoming increasingly fretful about swinging restrictions on daily life.
His big, set-piece speech on Wednesday was sprinkled with classic Johnson optimism, promising a “new Jerusalem” and a “green industrial revolution” – and attacking rumours that Covid-19 had robbed him of his “mojo”.
But his policy promises, including 95% loan-to-value mortgages, and a solution to the funding crisis in care homes, came with few details, and his spokesperson was unable to fill in any more afterwards, leaving the lingering sense that it had been much more rhetoric than substance, and would be quickly forgotten.
Everyone’s web connection: The Conservatives’ efforts at an online conference were much more ambitious than Labour’s, featuring a virtual conference centre complete with breakout lounges and merchandise stalls selling “Builders tea” mugs to match Johnson’s “Build, build, build” slogan.
But the ambition was not always matched by the technology, and journalists and members hoping to watch Saturday’s sessions spent much of the day struggling to log in. For half an hour, the connection appeared to drop completely.
Hanging in there:
The Liberal Democrats: Conferences can always be very different year-by-year, but for the Lib Dems the contrast was quite something. In autumn 2019 the excited talk among delegates was winning 80 or 100 seats in the general election. Fast forward 12 months and they have just 11 MPs, and are searching for a new focus after Brexit. If this year’s conference was one of transition, it was at least smooth, albeit with the occasional brutal policy arguments the delegates relish – this time taken online.
Ed Davey won the summer’s leadership election convincingly, and used his speech to present himself as the voice of carers. On Europe, a new policy emerged – EU membership is off the table for now, but not ever. And as Lib Dem MPs like to say, picking themselves up after disastrous election results is not exactly a new experience.
