After the Labour conference, Starmer’s ‘tunnel’ seems longer and darker than ever before

“Do you want to do something on the Labour conference”, asked the Canary’s editor. I didn’t need asking more than once. I didn’t really need asking at all.

No victory lap in sight at the Labour conference

This was the first gathering of the Labour Party since the most disproportionate outcome in British electoral history, a little under three months ago.

I can already hear the groaning Starmerite loyalists, secretly wondering if this ‘responsible government’ malarkey is all that it is cracked up to be.

If winning 63% of the parliamentary seats on 34% of the lowest turnout since universal suffrage isn’t disproportionate, what on earth is?

This conference was supposed to be a celebration of Labour’s return to power after fourteen long years in the political wilderness. Instead, it has been overshadowed by the furore over dodgy donors, dodgy policies, and dodgy politicians.

The expected victory lap didn’t happen. How could it? Their party is mired in scandal and chaos, less than ninety days after the Tories (blue) were unceremoniously ousted from office.

“People are asking how things can have gone wrong so quickly. Hiring Sue Gray was just obviously a stupid move, and now it’s backfiring”, said one Labour source, echoing the feelings of many of the dejected Labour delegates as they left the conference hall.

Even die-hard members at the Labour conference aren’t fooled by the hypocrisy of the Labour freebies scandal.

The hypocrisy is off the charts

Watching Angela Rayner bang on about Tory cronyism while knowing she has accepted free designer clothing worth £2,230 from luxury brand ME+EM, according to the Register of Members’ Interests, must be a tough pill to swallow.

And let’s not forget the trip to New York with an apartment looking out over the beautiful Manhattan skyline. Good old Lord Alli.

Like Ms Rayner herself asked on X back in 2021, “Who paid for Boris Johnson’s luxury Caribbean holiday and the renovation of his flat, and what did these donors expect in return for their huge generosity?”

Good question that. And I guess we could ask who on earth would blow £67,000 from the public purse on a fucking ‘vanity photographer’ while leaving pensioners to freeze?

But what of the Labour conference itself? We had higher water bills and a bit of PFI profiteering to remind us all that the Blairite free market headbangers are fully in control of the Labour machine.

So how’s this for some neoliberal thinking? The private companies that flood our waterways with sewage without a single shit given for the environmental catastrophe left in their wake, will get another £88 BILLION of new private money to distribute to their shareholders. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

No protest allowed

Labour’s fascist tendencies were once again on display after a young protester was dragged out of the conference hall in scenes reminiscent of the violent removal of Walter Wolfgang, then 83, who was forcibly evicted from Labour’s 2005 conference for shouting “nonsense” during a speech by Jack Straw.

Imagine Walter Wolfgang in today’s Labour Party. A left-wing Jewish ex-CND vice president and vocal supporter of Stop The War wouldn’t last five minutes in the party and even less time in the Labour conference hall.

The young protestor, who was detained by the police for an hour, should’ve been applauded for adding something relevant to the chancellor’s monotonous speech, not locked up.

All Reeves could manage in response to the protestors call for an end to arms sales to Israel was some old mumbo jumbo about Labour not being “a party of protest”.

Finally! Kill-a-gran-for-Christmas Reeves and I agree on just one thing. Labour definitely isn’t a party of protest, but it is a party of shit landlords, intolerable hypocrisy, freebie addicts, bought-and-paid-for lobbyist playthings, ineptitude, dishonesty, division, cronyism, and corruption.

Give me a party of protest over that fucking disgraceful charge sheet any day.

An interminably long speech

What is the point in being gifted power by the most hated Conservative government in living memory if the principles you take into power are not *your* moral values, or the vision that is needed to take the country forward, but those of the highest bidder?

Starmer’s keynote speech was no better or worse than I expected. We’ve become accustomed to Sir Freeloader’s promise of a brighter tomorrow throughout his time in opposition, and enough of those three word slogans to start his own right-of-centre focus group.

But like the entire Labour conference, Starmer’s interminably long speech — rather aptly delivered on the same day he recorded his lowest ever approval rating with YouGov — was haunted by the spectre of recent revelations that has seen the Labour Party taking an almighty kicking.

While Starmer takes great pleasure from frequently reminding us of the criminals he locked up during his time at the Crown Prosecution Service, it felt like the new prime minister was the defendant on trial this time around.

Starmer and the Labour conference needed to deliver – and he didn’t

Starmer needed to deliver the speech of his life. Yet he ended up demanding the return of sausages from Gaza.

Starmer needed to demonstrate an understanding of the Gaza genocide that we have yet to see, and he ended up telling a young ex-Starmerite protestor that his concern for the slaughter of Palestinian children belonged in 2019.

Starmer’s pitch was no more than what the status quo wanted. He spoke of a Britain that belongs to all of us, but there’s every chance he delivered his speech wearing a designer suit that belongs to someone else.

Starmer’s key message was that he is the right man to help Britain find the “light at the end of the tunnel”, which really is rather ironic given that he has spent the last 10 weeks making that tunnel seem even longer and darker than it did under the last lot.

I’ve read some fantastic coverage of the Labour conference from the Canary team this week, which has served as a timely reminder as to why we need to support independent media, or we just end up with the filtered corporate media, and nobody wants that, do they?

Featured image via Rachael Swindon