There is undoubtedly an NHS crisis but it was surely added to in Brighton this week by a spate of minor sprains and mild bruising caused by excessive back-slapping. Stretched A&E nurses curious about the cause of the epidemic will have cheerfully been told by their patients of Labour’s Glorious Unvictory (The D word is banned).
It would be churlish (and failing clients, of course) to not accept that something has fundamentally changed in the Labour Party. It isn’t so much left or right being in the ascendance but a shift in power between the party’s establishment and its grassroots.
Of course if you spent most of your time in the Grand or Metropole you’ll be forgiven for thinking that not much had changed. Tables to brief a distracted MP are still like gold dust, AEs still choose their fringes on the chances of free wine and canapés and Peter Bingle is still tweeting how nasty Labour types are, but beyond the hotels it's all very different.
The conference centre was teeming with delegates who were passionate, motivated and even being whipped by the respective factions (Momentum had an app – there’s posh). If you think back to previous conferences and try and remember anything about the conference hall you’ll probably be pushed to recall more than that Walter Wolfgang geezer being manhandled out for heckling Straw over Iraq (extremist!).
Well, it ain’t like that anymore. The hall is the epicentre of conference now, substantive rule changes are being voted on that will entrench one wing’s dominance for a generation and redraw the balance between the elected and activist wings. Some of Labour’s biggest politicians are having to twist arms to get on the podium.
Ultimately, party democracy was the only currency in Brighton town. If you take one thing away it is that members are sovereign, they must be consulted, consent and elected tiers should reflect their wishes. Unless *cough* that includes Labour’s Brexit position, here the tide of democracy must wait a while longer. This was best shown by Momentum flexing their organisational power by stymieing a substantive debate and vote on Brexit (it would cause a “divisive vote” I was told by one Momentum Lexiteer, something I know they wouldn’t dream of wanting elsewhere….).
“We want party democracy!”
"OK, let’s have a vote on the Single Market”
"Not that type of party democracy!”
Anyway, I digress.
Conference changed this week, if you are a Labour PA person you’ll have seen it for months in your branches or GCs, the membership has shifted and it wants party officials and the elected tier to reflect what it wants. There is no deference, they aren’t happy to stuff envelopes and leave the decisions to the establishment – they are in charge and they and the Leadership know it.
And acknowledging this is the key to understanding Corbyn’s speech. Yes it was bloody long, yes it was a cover version of the 1980s greatest hits but it also looked at changing society in the way the party has. Corbyn framed the population as fed up of being tossed around by the markets, being told what they should want and taken for granted while the establishment carries on regardless. He set out how he wanted them to be listened to (what Centrist Dads might call being “empowered”) and the members loved him for it.
If you sat through all that and didn’t feel it raised a challenging question for this industry then you aren’t thinking hard enough. If members and Unions are the focus of power now – how long are clients going to be happy with meeting MPs in the Metropole? A free Jeremy Corbyn mug awaits the agency that comes up with the answer.