Forget George Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate. The new world order for the current government is the Two Minutes Hope.
Having spent much of the last three months telling everyone how rubbish everything is and that there’s even less money than they imagined, the Labour party has now realised that many people had lost the will to live. Had decided there was no coming back from the chaos and scandals of the Tory years. So now we are all commanded to obey the Two Minutes Hope. To stop what we are doing at midday precisely and try to think of something we are vaguely looking forward to. It’s harder than you think.
On Monday we had Rachel Reeves. She’s not a natural. The best she could come up with was that at least we were all still here. Apart from those that had died in the last 24 hours. On Tuesday it was Keir Starmer’s turn, in his first conference speech as prime minister. He got round to the hope bit about two-thirds of the way through and sounded far more convincing about it than his chancellor had. Though it was still going to be hard work. And not all of us would make it. But hey, it was a start. And that was progress.
Waiting for the speech to start, the list of constituencies Labour had won rolled up the screen like the opening sequence from a Star Wars film. All we were missing was the Jedi knight. We didn’t have long to wait. After a brief video clip that included the BBC announcing the exit poll – drawing some of the longest and loudest cheers of the afternoon – Keir entered, stage left. Arms raised, thanking the audience. The first and most essential act of communion.
Starmer has got a lot better at these gigs. Maybe it’s the media training. Or maybe he no longer suffers from impostor syndrome. He believes he has earned the right to the star turn. Just three or four years ago, when he became Labour leader, his delivery was awkward, hesitant. He couldn’t land a punchline. Looked terrified he might lose his place at any moment. Now he commands the stage. He is at ease. Has one-liner riffs on hand for any unwanted heckles. Enjoys the glitz and the drama.
The only real downer is his scripts. It’s become the accepted norm that a leader’s speech should last an hour. Otherwise it’s somehow deemed insubstantial. But there’s no point putting yourself and your audience through the ordeal if you don’t have enough material. Better to leave people wanting more. Especially as much of the speech appeared to have been lifted from last year’s efforts. Conference is not a place for a repeat episode.
Worse, there was a lack of coherence. Almost as if someone had accidentally scattered the 15 pages of the speech on the floor and stapled them back together in the wrong order. No wonder most of the audience looked a bit bemused and comatose for the first half-hour. The standing ovations more of a Pavlovian reflex to trigger words – Nationalise railways! Workers’ rights! – than a conscious response to detailed argument and rhetoric.
“We have had the hope beaten out of us,” Keir declared early on. True. But not the greatest of starts. Or what people had come to hear. Starmer has never been one for triumphalism – it’s one of his more endearing qualities that he only ever really gloats about Arsenal victories – but the audience looked as if they could have done with just a little more celebration. If you can’t have a party after a landslide victory, then when can you?
You could sense people struggling to keep up. Trying to follow the logic as Starmer sidestepped from idea to idea before being as surprised as any of us that he had inadvertently found himself back where he started. The pauses by Pinter. The words by Beckett. The deconstruction by Derrida. Maybe this was a masterpiece after all and we just hadn’t realised it. Keir included. Could this have been a gamechanging paradigm? The model on which all future party leaders are based.
At one point during a random paragraph on the Middle East, Starmer demanded the return of all “sausages”. It was tempting to believe this was a breakout moment of postmodern theatre of the absurd, rather than a mangling of the word “hostages”. We were well beyond the conventionally prosaic. He also called for an end to hostilities between Israel and Lebanon and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. It doesn’t appear as if anyone in the region was listening.
Then there were the occasional mentions of the five missions. Leitmotifs to anchor us to reality. Except even Keir can’t quite remember what these missions are. We can all still recite Rishi Sunak’s five promises that he never kept but the Labour missions are still viewed through a glass darkly. And in the midst of all this, a random shoutout to a holiday in the Lake District. The point of which escaped everyone. Probably just comic relief.
For the last 20 minutes, it suddenly all began to hold together. Its meaning mystically revealed. The vibes finally taking shape in more or less the right order. The audience perked up. Opened their eyes to the heavens. Stood up and cheered. Now they began to see the point of Keir. The point of their existence.
Things were difficult. Things had been broken by the Tories. Starmer reclaimed “Take back control” from Brexit and applied it to migration. He nicked “We’re all in this together” from David Cameron and made it sound as if it might be true. Something Lord Big Dave had never managed. There were tough times ahead. Code for tax rises imminent. Nimbys would just have to get used to the idea of pylons in their eyeline. Not even a lone Gaza protester could distract him.
We ended in a fugue state of ambition, hope, defiance. Hope, defiance, ambition. Defiance, ambition, hope. There was a light at the end of the tunnel. Even if access to it was strictly time-limited.
The last few minutes were drowned out in a standing ovation. Keir acknowledged the crowd but didn’t milk the applause. A quick hug with his wife and he was off. Back to a government of service. The rest of us had been given our instructions. The Two Minutes Hope starts here.
A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here
