Labour conference begins this Saturday and already expectations are running high. Ahead of his first in-person appearance as leader, Keir Starmer has dropped the season’s hottest release – an 11,500 word personal essay on his vision for Britain. There’s talk of rule changes, factional disputes and all kinds of rows over obscure procedure on the conference floor while ex-Unite general secretary Len McCluskey aims to spoil Keir’s party by having his own rival book launch on Saturday.
And now, as if things could not get much worse, John Bercow is set to make his Labour debut down in Brighton. The former Commons Speaker will be interviewed on Monday by Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland in an event being hosted by Small and Medium Enterprises 4 Labour. It comes three months after Bercow announced that he was joining the Starmer army, abandoning two centuries of parliamentary precedent on the grounds that the government had done so first with its refusal to give him a peerage. Bercow is, admittedly, well placed to deliver a paean on small businesses – his company Fedhead Limited made more than £500,000 in its first year.
At least Labour are used to dealing with such colourful creatures in their ranks. Steerpike understands that during the Corbyn years staff had to produce a ruling on whether a delegate could bring their ‘comfort’ snake to conference. The proposal was (sadly) rejected on the grounds it might bite other delegates but there were concerns rejecting the snake risked breaching the Equality Act. Now though with Bercow’s invite, it looks like the ban on snakes is over.
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