Normally the default response in the Labour party to a rough couple of weeks is to blame the Shadow Cabinet. They’re not pulling together, they’re thinking about their own future leadership prospects rather than backing Ed Miliband and so on and so forth. But while the Shadow Cabinet is looking weak this week at their party conference, for once it is not their fault. They are standing under a banner that announces ‘Labour’s Plan for Britain’s Future’, but then say no more about that plan.
They are all being sent naked into the conference hall. All they are being required to talk about is their values, and what they have already announced. The first might be effective if the shadow ministers talking about their personal mission as Labourites gave the impression that they were excited by this mission. You are, after all, not talking to journalists but your party faithful, and if you don’t care about the message the journalists will communicate to voters, then you can stick to encouraging the people who will help you win the ground war in 2015. Oddly, for a group of people who are on the brink of government, those who have spoken so far don’t seem very enthused at all.
By the time Rachel Reeves stood up to speak this afternoon, it was clear that a deliberate strategy of short, sweet and empty speeches was being pursued. To be fair to Reeves, hers was not ‘boring snoring’ in that it listed what she plans to do on welfare, and she did at least try to appear excited by how close Labour was to governing.
But she like every other Shadow Cabinet member has been told to stick to a strict limit. They have been given 700 words each. I understand that one of the reasons given for the limit was that Yvette Cooper spoke for far too long at last year’s conference, and the centre wanted more control.
And the reason the speeches have been policy-lite, as well as ensuring that the only story from the whole conference is a big speech announcement from Ed Miliband, is that the party thinks it has already produced enough policy. What it needs to do now is to create a narrative and weave its policies and arguments together in something it can sell to the electorate. But the atmosphere in the hall has been so flat for the past two days that Ed Miliband is going to need to do some very impressive weaving to perk up the conference, let alone voters.
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