Quote of the day
The questions people should ask themselves ahead of the next election are simple: do you and your family feel better off than you did 13 years ago? Do our hospitals, our schools and our police work better than 13 years ago? Frankly, is there anything in Britain that works better than when the Conservatives came into office 13 years ago?”
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, channels the former US president Ronald Reagan in an attempt to define the next election.
Row of the day
With MPs on their best behaviour, the most explosive row of the day happened outside the conference venue where one angry delegate confronted a group of pro-Palestinian protesters.
The Israel-Hamas war threatens to exacerbate tensions within the party, with Keir Starmer under pressure to suspend Apsana Begum, a Labour MP who posed with the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign after it announced it was going to protest outside the Israeli embassy. So far however the Labour leader has stood by his backbencher, and the party has avoided an ugly internal battle.
The shadow exports minister, Afzal Khan, also apologised after posing for a photograph in front of a Palestinian flag saying “end apartheid now” at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s stand at the conference. The picture is understood to have been taken on Sunday but posted online by PSC on Monday.
Tweet of the day
There is no tolerance for hate in our city. I remain in close contact with the Met Police. Whoever did this will face the full force of the law.
— Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) October 9, 2023
I stand with Jewish Londoners, today and always. https://t.co/3268bUO6rI
Sadiq Khan responds to vandalism in the north London suburb of Golders Green, which is home to a large Jewish population – and also to the comment by his Conservative mayoral rival, Susan Hall, that he represents a threat to London’s Jews.
Monday’s highlights
If an observer wanted to gauge the mood within both the Conservative and Labour parties as they head into an election year, they could not have done better than attend the parallel speeches by the chancellor and shadow chancellor.
Last week Jeremy Hunt spoke for 15 minutes to a largely indifferent Tory audience, who were unimpressed by the lack of new policies he had to offer. On Monday his Labour counterpart enthralled a packed hall with a 40-minute speech spelling out how she sees the next election playing out.
Reeves is usually better known for her dogged message discipline than her soaring rhetoric, but her attack on the Conservatives’ economic legacy brought the audience repeatedly to their feet.
Ed Miliband, liberated from the shackles of leadership, took advantage of the buoyant mood in the conference hall, giving a speech peppered with lines that appeared to have come from the Bumper Book of Centrist Dad Jokes.
“Let’s send these Tories to where they belong,” he told delegates. “Let’s recycle them from government to opposition. And chuck them into the seven dustbins of history.”
