A Free Left Blog

One of the curious things about this curious Labour Party conference for me looking from the outside has been the self-congratulation on display. The first thing I saw when I switched on BBC Parliament on Monday was a local party delegate from North London boasting about beating the Lib Dems during the last election, praising how amazing everyone was and saying what a terrible state the economy is in due to austerity. (i.e. ‘We’re great and right, that lot the public preferred over us are wicked and evil’, and ergo said public – except for the righteous denizens of North London – are wicked and evil too). That’s maybe a bit harsh; after all you can’t expect ‘hardworking’ ordinary Labour folk to turn up to a conference in an expensive town like Brighton to moan and be negative and have a crap time telling each other how deluded they are. Nevertheless, the self-congratulation looks a bit off given Labour’s successive election defeats to a Conservative Party which is ...

Over the last few years of Ed Miliband’s leadership I have become used to being rather impressed with his annual conference speech and then finding myself gradually losing faith as the months have drifted by with little or no follow-up: indeed with little of interest emanating from Labour. His latest speech yesterday – the last at conference before the 2015 General Election – felt like that whole year’s cycle compressed into an hour. Early promise – with a few interesting and engaging ideas – was followed by a whole load of drift interspersed with a kind of paint-by-numbers approach to pleasing the activists, notably by mentioning the NHS every few minutes. Ed Miliband making his 2014 Conference speech As the speech drifted, so I drifted and started thinking about other stuff, like: What’s for dinner? Maybe my toenails need cutting? Is anyone on Twitter being more interesting about the speech than the speech itself? (Answer: ‘Yes’). It wasn’t surprising to find out l...

This article was orginally published by LabourList on 8th October 2012. A Murdoch may not be the first person Labour people might turn to in seeking guidance to help revive and rebuild the party, but Rupert’s independent-minded daughter Elizabeth had a few things to say recently that bear thinking about. Reflecting on the travails of News Corp in her MacTaggart Lecture to the Edinburgh Festival in June this year, Elizabeth Murdoch said one the biggest lessons of a tumultuous year was “the need for any organisation to discuss, affirm and institutionalise a rigorous set of values based on an explicit statement of purpose”. A rigorous set of values based on an explicit statement of purpose, for any organisation. Turn that statement towards the main political parties and you are greeted with something of a void. What are Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems actually for? During Conference week, we always hear a lot of airy waffle about Labour values, without m...