After 13 years, is Labour finally ready for power? Sir Keir Starmer certainly believes so – and not just for one term but two. As the glittery Labour conference in Liverpool comes to a close today, we take stock of four key moments and what they tell us about the party’s chance of winning the next general election.
“The atmosphere was completely different to the previous week at the Tory conference,” says Peter Walker, the Guardian’s deputy political editor, who is finally hanging up his lanyards after three consecutive weeks of covering party conferences. “The place was packed, it was full of energy, it felt vigorous. They felt as if they weren’t just trying to look like they are ready for power – but that they really are.”
“They” is a key word. It’s not just Starmer who has shown himself as ready to lead. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, won the backing of not just the former Bank of England governor and “banking rock star” Mark Carney but also perhaps more of the UK’s business elite than turned out to meet Jeremy Hunt, the actual chancellor, last week.
The potentially troublesome “they” on the left of the party are also ready to let Starmer take charge, if not publicly cheerleading his centre-ground policies. “There was no dissent from within the conference hall,” says Peter. “They want to win the election too, rather than protest from the outside – well most of them do.”
Stay with Peter and I for more highlights from Liverpool, after the headlines.
Five big stories
Israel-Hamas war | Joe Biden has condemned the attack by Hamas militants on Israel at the weekend as the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”, as Israeli jets continued to strike Gaza, an enclave running desperately low on medical supplies, according to the World Health Organization.
Weather | Freezing temperatures could be about to blast the UK, putting an end to the unseasonably warm October, and heavy rainfall is expected in parts of England. Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland could reach as low as -3C and the south of England and Wales could see about two inches of rain on Thursday and Friday.
Conservatives | Anna Soubry, the former Conservative business minister, has announced she will be voting for Labour at the next general election. The former MP, now a criminal barrister, said on social media that with Keir Starmer, Labour has the “values and competence to deliver the change our country desperately needs.”
Captain Tom | The daughter of Captain Sir Tom Moore has admitted to keeping £800,000 from books that the late army veteran had written. Hannah Ingram-Moore said the family kept the sum from three books because Captain Tom had wanted them to retain the profits.
UK news | The Sycamore Gap tree is being removed from its spot on Hadrian’s Wall after it was cut down by vandals two weeks ago. On Thursday a crane will lift the 50-foot sycamore off the wall in Northumberland and it will be put into storage at a National Trust property – the location of which is not being disclosed for security reasons.
In depth: Labour presents itself as ‘ready to serve, ready to lead’ – and ready to sparkle
Less than 12 hours after Starmer’s speech was interrupted by a protester who sprinkled the Labour leader with glitter, the party released T-shirts with the slogan “SPARKLE WITH STARMER”. You can pre-order here.
There’s a couple of things we can learn from Yaz Ashmawi’s intervention. “It’s a shock that it was allowed to happen – it was a major security breach,” Peter says. “It is kind of indicative of Labour’s position: they’re on the cusp of power but not in power, and the security reflects that.”
At the Tory party conference a week earlier, delegates were made to work through airport-style X-ray scanners and bags were thoroughly searched by security guards armed with metal-detector wands. “At Labour, someone might have had a vague look in your bag,” Peter says. “It was 14 seconds until security guards tackled the protester.”
So long, in fact, that Angela Rayner, Starmer’s deputy, joked: “I thought I was going to do a full John Prescott at one point. Although Rachel [Reeves] was nearly beating me to it … I’ve never seen her be so angry.”
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‘Protest or power’
The interruption gave Starmer a perfect opportunity to state the party’s intent: “Protest or power, that is why we changed our party.”
Like Rishi Sunak’s last week, Starmer’s speech was light on new policies. But Peter says a key difference was Starmer’s determination to prove he could deliver them – “the phrase was ‘bomb proofing’.”
“I am going through a process of bomb-proofing every single thing that we put to the electorate,” Starmer said in a broadcast round yesterday. “After the last 13 years, I’m not prepared to have an incoming Labour government, should we be privileged to serve, that doesn’t deliver on its promises. So I have robustly tested everything. I don’t think it’s fair or right to ask the British public to go through more broken promises.”
In a column for the Daily Mail, Andrew Neil, the chairman of the Spectator, said it was “probably Sir Keir Starmer’s best major speech … though that is not an especially high bar”.
Peter isn’t sure it was Starmer’s best speech in terms of oratory. “But it went down really well in the hall. If you read it, it doesn’t work that well, but in clips it works much better.” As the public’s collective attention span collapses, perhaps this is a good thing.
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The making of Rachel Reeves
Reeves did give her best speech yet when she took to the stage on Monday. “She is not a natural orator,” Peter says. “Even her friends would probably say she is naturally quite awkward. But she really delivered, and she needed to.”
A key flank of attack for the Conservatives is to accuse Labour of being fiscally irresponsible. “Some in the middle are cautious of trusting Labour on the economy, Peter says. “They need to live down that note left by Liam Byrne [the chief secretary to the Treasury under Gordon Brown] that there was no money left.”
Reeves said her Labour “will not waver from iron-clad fiscal rules”. “We will protect the independence of the Bank of England, the Office for Budget Responsibility and our civil service,” she said. “Ready to serve, ready to lead, and ready to rebuild Britain.”
It led Carney, a man once chased halfway around the world by George Osborne when he was Tory chancellor, to say in a video message: “It is beyond time we put her energy and ideas into action.”
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Is Labour now the party of business?
It is not just Carney who is a fan of Reeves and her “securonomics” Labour. Big business was out in force in the halls in Liverpool. There were stands for Google, Ineos and Specsavers; slick videos for Amazon and Uber, fringe events sponsored by Deliveroo and Goldman Sachs, while even the parliamentary lounge – a retreat for MPs from the throng of 16,000 delegates – was sponsored by Lloyds Banking Group.
“I’m very impressed by Rachel Reeves. She seems extremely competent,” says Stephen Phipson, the chief executive of the manufacturing trade group Make UK.
“What we’ve seen from the Labour party is a really strong commitment to making things in this country. We never saw that last week at the Tory conference. The whole thing about stability – it was perfect. We have been calling for this for years.”
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Sunak’s uneasy reaction
“It’s not a rule, but there’s an understanding in politics that you don’t seek to interrupt the other side’s conference by making announcements at the same time,” Peter says. But while Reeves was making her pitch on the economy, Sunak held an event for business leaders at Currys repair centre in Nottinghamshire, leading to questions that it was “desperate” attempt to hijack the narrative.
Questions from the audience included: “Why should we vote Conservative? … With the mess left by your predecessor [Liz Truss], why should we vote for you?” Sunak laughed awkwardly during applause for the question, before saying: “I could spend a lot of my time talking about the past, and what I inherited and all the rest of it … that doesn’t help any of you.”
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Can Labour do it at an election?
“It is a big ask compared to 2019,” Peter says. “To get a majority of one, there needs to be a 12% swing to Labour – that would be the biggest since 1945.”
But, that is compared to 2019, and Peter says the 2019 election was “exceptionally bad” for Labour. “Everything went wrong for Labour, and everything went right for the Tories. There were people saying they ‘would love to vote for Labour but we’re worried about Corbyn’, that combined with the desire to see Brexit done with, made the Conservative majority much bigger.”
Peter says Labour is really pleased the Conservatives have set up the next election as all about change. “If the electorate want change, only one party has been in power for the last 13 years.”
What else we’ve been reading
Naomi Klein has written an important response to those who minimise the massacre of Israeli civilians: the only way forward, Klein writes, is “true solidarity. Humanism that unites people across ethnic and religious lines.” Nimo
Apart from a few big cities like New York, it is impossible to get by in the US without a car. Now, finally, some local authorities are experimenting with car-free neighbourhoods. Oliver Milman visited one on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona. Rupert
Kelley Fong follows the story of a 23-year-old who had her child taken away after she had a brief spat with a cashier, and unpacks the heartbreaking reality of what happens when child protective services breaks up your family. Nimo
Welcome to the microplex! There are a frankly staggering 1,500 small volunteer-run cinemas in the UK. Claire Armitstead finds out how they survive in this lovely piece. “It’s a hidden world, especially in rural places: anywhere you can set up a screen you can have a cinema.” Rupert
The Atlantic’s Elaina Plott Calabro has written a clear-eyed and thorough profile of the US vice-president Kamala Harris. The piece examines why, after three years, Harris still has not won over some of her peers and the public. Nimo
Sport
Football | Mark Bullingham, the FA chief executive, has raised the prospect of the game’s global rule-making body examining whether audio between referees and VARs should be available live. The suggestion follows Luis Díaz’s goal for Liverpool at Tottenham being wrongly disallowed last month, leading to further calls for such conversations to be played out in real time.
Cricket | Rohit Sharma smashed a record seventh World Cup century as India powered to an emphatic eight-wicket win over Afghanistan in Wednesday’s group match in Delhi.
Rugby | Steve Borthwick appears set to axe George Ford and install his captain Owen Farrell at fly-half for England’s World Cup quarter-final against Fiji with Marcus Smith expected to be given the nod at full-back.
The front pages
The Guardian leads again today on the Israel-Hamas war. This time it’s “Israelis suspended between fear, grief and foreboding” with an image of one of the many funerals taking place after the attack by Hamas.
Other papers remain focused on the aftermath of the attack too. The Times points towards the next stage in the conflict saying “Israeli coalition ready to invade” while the i says “Invasion fear grips Israel and Gaza”. On the front of the Financial Times it’s “Netanyahu forms coalition war cabinet” and the Mirror’s headline is “Death and more death”.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph’s headline is “Royals condemn Hamas attacks as terrorism” as the Mail says “The King calls them terrorists, why can’t the BBC”.
And the Sun has “We pocketed Cpt Tom £800k” as it’s headline, referring to the daughter of the late army veteran admitting to keeping the sum from books he had written.
Today in Focus
Human catastrophe unfolds in Israel and Gaza
Israelis are still coming to terms with the worst daily death toll in the country’s history. More than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed by Hamas militants. In retaliation, Israel has launched a devastating bombing campaign and cut off power to the Gaza Strip. More than a 1,200 Gazans have been killed and hospitals are running dangerously short of supplies and electricity.
In this episode, Michael Safi hears from the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, Bethan McKernan, who has spent the days since Saturday’s attack travelling around southern Israel.
Cartoon of the day | Sarah Akinterinwa
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Stockholm has announced plans to become the first big capital city to ban petrol and diesel cars from its centre. The new plans will come into effect by 2025 whereby 20 blocks of Stockholm’s inner city area, spanning its finance and main shopping districts, will be restricted to electric vehicle traffic only. The new rules have been introduced to combat the environmental and health impacts of high levels of air and noise pollution caused by cars.
The scheme is more far-reaching than most other cities: “It is more ‘ultra’ than the ultra-low emission zone of London,” says Lars Strömgren, the city’s vice-mayor for transport. The Green party also hopes that the ban will speed up the transition away from petrol and diesel vehicles.
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Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
