Day one of the Labour conference – oh frabjous day! The annual gathering of people who hate each other just a little bit more than they hate themselves was underway. You really do wonder where they find some of these characters.
Sir Keir arrives in Liverpool as the least popular PM in history; worse than Truss or Johnson at their nadirs, worse than Lloyd George when he did all his lady diddling, worse than Chamberlain. I bet the ghost of Lord North is absolutely over the moon. Mr. Starmer is a road traffic black spot of a PM.
Most excruciating of all, inevitably, was the Prime Minister himself
In light of this, Steve Reed had been sent to do the media round – somehow dodging the hundreds of frustrated farmers who were protesting just outside the secure zone, tractors beeping. The erstwhile Farmer’s Friend is now at the Housing department and just as scratchy as ever. It was like interviewing a newly divorced wasp. Camilla Tominey of GB News asked him how it was that Sir Keir had gone from landslide to landfill quite so quickly. ‘Well, we shouldn’t be surprised,’ Reed snapped. Believe me, Steve, we’re not.
City Steve was adamant that the people responsible for all Labour’s cock ups were, bizarrely, the Tories. Given the organisation of the Conservative and Unionist party increasingly resembles attempts to run a tombola at a mental asylum, it seems unlikely that they’re behind some Svengalian mind games which have forced Sir Keir, against his will, to appoint a parade of 24-carat rotters to the cabinet. Mr. Reed ploughed on, claiming that Labour ‘wasn’t operating a revolving door’. Camilla Tominey then listed all the people who have been forced to resign in disgrace. She may as well have just read out the phone book.
After this Lammyean Mastermind display we moved onto Reed’s new specialist subject: houses. How many had been built? ‘I know, it’s really low.’ Hardly reassuring. ‘I don’t know the exact figure, I’m not Wikipedia.’ I wonder whether it might be prudent to fix ministers of this calibre with a little bell, like the medieval lepers of old, so that the general public can be warned of their approach. Finally he snapped at Ms. Tominey: ‘You only know because it’s written in front of you!’ It’s going to be such a fun three days!
Other members of the seemingly endlessly rotating politburo of mediocrity raised more questions than they answered. Baroness Morgan, the Welsh First Minister told the conference, in a vaguely suggestive tone, that they’d be seeing ‘a lot more of her’. Where? The job centre? Douglas Alexander boasted that the government was ‘delivering promises’. How? By post? Telegram? Placing them into old bottles and lobbing them into the Mersey?
Most excruciating of all, inevitably, was the Prime Minister himself. Sir Keir’s voice has always fascinated me. Its tones defy exact description – like a Dalek with a head cold, like an accountant being strangled, like an infected sinus brought to life. Today, though, he excelled himself.
Presumably to make his star guest, the Australian Prime Minister, feel at home, Starmer began randomly slipping into an Aussie accent. Perhaps he’d been momentarily possessed by the Ghost of Crocodile Dundee or was labouring under the delusion that he had become a sort of less likeable Harold Bishop from Neighbours. Anthony Albanese was ‘a fellow mumba’ of the Labour movement. He then referred to ‘my home in Downing Stroight’.
The avuncular Albo pretended not to notice that the weird grey man in front of him was having some sort of verbal stroke. Instead, he welcomed a ‘legend’, ‘a great Australian, Julia Gillard, who’s here with us’. Gillard, of course, was knifed by her party for being catastrophically unpopular and blisteringly incompetent. She was the perfect guest.
Albo concluded by announcing that ‘the unity of Labour is the hope of the world’. I’m not so sure about that, but the divisions of Labour are providing the world with plenty of comedy so far.
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