The Labour conference, given the government’s current levels of popularity – somewhere about the same rung occupied by, say, galloping dysentery or Huw Edwards – was always going to be a macabre spectacle. But there’s an aspect to this Grand Guignol that I wasn’t expecting; the unpleasant sight of various members of the cabinet vying, in their addresses, to show who can wave the flag with the greatest gusto.
We’ve had Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper railing against Reform, describing them as ‘plastic patriots’
We’ve had Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper railing against Reform, describing them as ‘plastic patriots’. Housing Secretary Steve Reed is trying to reinvent himself as a likely lad, full of laughs. Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy is very upset about Robert Jenrick having the sheer temerity to criticise our wonderful judiciary: ‘His attacks on our judges and institutions would make Winston Churchill shudder in his grave. Robert, patriotism isn’t smearing our independent judiciary from the pub on X’.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has used X to tweet out a stomach-clenching video paean to herself with the legend: ‘A greater Britain not a littler England’. (Note that it’s always England that’s the problem. The flinch from the concept of Englishness while professing patriotism is a bit of a giveaway, isn’t it?)
All this hot patriotic air comes hard on the heels of Lib Dem leader Ed Davey’s excruciating lyrical flight last week, describing ‘the many incredible things’ the country has going for it: ‘The land of the Lionesses and the home of Formula One. Windermere and Loch Ness. Male voice choirs and Hogmanay. County shows and school fairs. Fish and chips. Village greens and cricket pavilions’.
It’s enough to make a horse sick.
In my former life, I attended a number of Doctor Who conventions. For the uninitiated, these are occasions where Gallifreyan misfits descend on a hotel or conference centre for a weekend. But there is one big difference between this and Labour’s meet-up: the Whovians are gathered to discuss minute production details, to touch the hem of the garments of forgotten assistants and to carp at bemused scriptwriters. The Labourites are running the country, but I would suggest that they are at a far greater distance from reality than Doctor Who fans. (Though Labour supporters probably smell a bit better.)
Labour’s conference also reveals another flight from reality: that Keir Starmer’s cabinet of misfits seem genuinely to believe in magic money. Chancellor Rachel Reeves took a thinly-coded pop at leadership wannabe Andy Burnham for advocating even higher taxes and public spending, a thing she intends to do anyway. Reeves might as well have said, ‘There are some who come in here and say we should be throwing money into the fire. How reckless. We should obviously stick to my fully costed plan of flushing it, at pace, down the toilet’.
But then, there’s so much going wrong with Britain that it’s very hard to keep it all up front in your head at the same time. Energy costs, the small boats crisis, free speech outrages, soaring inflation, mounting debt; these are things that would been headline news for weeks on end in the 1980s or 1990s. Now, they pile up one after the other into an indistinguishable wreck of twisted metal and mangled flesh. Such is the mountain of misery that I forget shocking, appalling things; ‘Oh yeah, the Pakistani rape gangs’. It’s not a surprise that people in Britain are very, very angry. Labour’s deluded conference pours fuel on the fire.
The mediocrity of the Labour response to that anger is almost overwhelming. Cooper’s use of the term ‘plastic patriots’ brings back memories of the part-time punks and weekend New Romantics of my youth; ‘Oh, that Jane she’s so plastic – she works in the cake shop all day and then does her hair and makeup like Toyah before she goes out, such a fake’.
And for all this chunter about Churchill and cricket pavilions, what are the real ‘values’ of progressives like Labour and the Lib Dems? Breakfast clubs and Sure Start hubs? Motability cars and cousin marriage? Not looking back in anger when children are stabbed or blown to bits?
Tech secretary Liz Kendall’s newly-announced fund for ‘tech sisters’ to take on the ‘tech bros’ of Silicon Valley just about sums it up. All this puff and fluff while millions subsist on benefits; I think it’s just possible Churchill, scrolling down his ghostly timeline in an Oxfordshire churchyard, might be having more of a shudder about that.
Starmer’s big speech was the icing on the cake. The Prime Minister vowed in that inspiring half-George, half-Zippy tone of his, to make Britain ‘a new country…a fairer country, a land of dignity and respect. Everyone seen, everyone valued, wealth creation in every single community’. Bring me my bow of burning gold!
We don’t want a new country. We were happy, in an understated never-given-it-much-thought way, with the one we had. It was Tony Blair’s stated intention in 1997 to make ‘New Britain’ ‘a young country’. But we’ve now had decades of this progressive guff, shamefully unreversed by the Tories, and we are on our knees. The very last thing needed is more of the same.
Labour have been so spooked by Nigel Farage’s Reform that they’re trying to fire back on his territory, which is comically transparent. If I was giving them advice, and if I meant them well, I would recommend that instead they fight their corner on their record. They should defend mass immigration; replace the Union Jack with the Palestinian flag. They should follow the lead of Shabana Mahmood and call those like Farage who object to their harebrained schemes ‘worse than racist’. See how well that goes down. My expectation would be that it wouldn’t land very well at all, but at least Labour wouldn’t look duplicitous and snivelling.
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