At the bar of the Grand Hotel in Brighton on Sunday night, a visitor at the Labour Party Conference rounded on a Member of the London Assembly who had just confessed to voting for Jeremy Corbyn. “I’m not buying you a drink, you Corbynista,” she said, before chuckling and proceeding to buy the Corbynite a gin and tonic.
Contrary to speculation, the mood in Brighton at this year’s party conference is not one of a party on the verge of divorce. Instead, an effort to accommodate the new leader’s leftward leanings seems to be in motion amongst sceptics, alongside those who welcomed his more radical approach from the start.
Speaking at a fringe event yesterday, former Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Ummuna welcomed Mr Corbyn’s style of leadership and the consultative approach the divisive leader had taken. He concluded that “the word New Labour is history now”.
This does not, however, mean that opposition within the party establishment has evaporated. Speaking at the Women’s Conference on Saturday, former Shadow Home Secretary and leadership contender Yvette Cooper criticised her rival’s supporters for their misogyny and online trolling. She suggested that the abuse directed at women dissuaded them from getting involved in politics, and her comments were generally welcomed by those present.
The failed attempt to include a motion on scrapping Trident in the Conference agenda was also a pointed reminder that Mr Corbyn’s plans for more policymaking to be devolved within the party would present him with unique challenges.
Many had suspected that the primary obstruction to the motion would come from the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC), which recently saw the addition of two relatively centrist members in the form of Gloria De Piero and Michael Cashman. However, the CAC agreed to put the question of whether a debate on the motion should take place to the conference, and it was widely-expected that this would mean the motion would be discussed at the Conference. Mr Corbyn also argued it needed to be debated in an interview with Andrew Marr on Sunday morning.
The failure of the motion to garner support was therefore, labelled a “severe embarrassment to Corbyn” by the Guardian, with only 0.16 per cent of the trade union block supporting the motion. Overall, only seven per cent of the delegates voted for it to be included.
All this came on the day that Mr Corbyn tried to bolster his party’s economic credibility by announcing a panel of economic advisers comprising many of the most highly-respected left wing economists in the world, including Joe Stiglitz, the US Nobel prize-winner, and Thomas Piketty, author of the seminal book Capital in the Twenty First Century.
Speaking at a Fringe meeting on Sunday evening, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell also said that he wanted to have an “open discussion” with the City of London about the possibility of a financial transactions tax, previously dubbed the “Robin Hood Tax”. The following morning he also announced in an interview with the BBC that the Bank of England’s mandate on monetary policy could be under review, suggesting that it may be encouraged to also consider factors such as growth and investment.
Having widely been perceived in the past as left-wing idealists whose focus was too hazy to apply the real world, Mr Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor have been using this conference as an opportunity to prove their critics wrong. As the new party leadership works to repair its economic credibility and public face, the coming days will help us to understand how the two ideologically-diverse wings of the Labour party could be accommodated in the age of Corbyn.
DeHavilland has covered hundreds of fringe events and main speeches at the four main party conferences. Order a copy of their comprehensive conference briefing online here.