After four days of ‘straight talking‘ politics in Brighton, Jeremy Corbyn’s first conference as Labour leader draws to a close today. With this year’s conference bringing together a mix of Corbynistas, Milifans and Blairites, Mr S has assembled a selection of photos showing some of the slightly strange elements of this year’s conference:
Jeremy Corbyn has come under increased scrutiny today after Mr S’s colleague Alex Massie revealed that parts of his conference speech were taken from a four-year old reject speech by the writer Richard Heller. The Labour press office claim that their straight talking leader approached Heller ‘because JC thought some of his material captured what he wanted to say’. However, given that Heller suggested Ed Miliband use the speech four years ago, it hardly epitomises Corbyn’s so-called ‘new kind of politics’. With the party playing the incident down, one Labour member is at least feeling more forthcoming. Speaking at the Fabian Society’s ‘week in review’ event, John McTernan — Tony Blair’s former director of political
Jeremy Corbyn’s aim at this conference has been to keep the Labour party on an even keel. But there was one line in his speech that has unsettled some frontbenchers. He said this about Trident: ‘Today we face very different threats from the time of the Cold War which ended thirty years ago. That’s why I have asked our Shadow Defence Secretary, Maria Eagle, to lead a debate and review about how we deliver that strong, modern effective protection for the people of Britain. I’ve made my own position on one issue clear. And I believe I have a mandate from my election on it. I don’t believe £100 billion
He looked bored. He looked dishevelled. His half-knotted crimson tie sagged disconsolately beneath his bearded throat. The drab jacket seemed as beige as ever. Corbyn spoke to the Labour conference looking like an embarrassed scout-master thanking his colleagues for a surprise party he didn’t want. ‘Any chance we could start the speech?’ he asked as the crowed clapped and cheered him. He began in ever-so-humble mode by saying how grateful he was ‘to be invited’ to address the conference. And he warmly thanked the three rival candidates he had trounced in the leadership election. He sounded as if they’d trounced him. The hesitant, informal style is so effective it looks
On its own terms, I imagine Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to the Labour conference can be considered tolerably acceptable. Much of it, after all, consisted of time-served bromides with which almost no-one could reasonably disagree. It was a Marx and apple-pie speech that omitted most of Marx. And who dislikes pie? Nevertheless, what was new was not good and what was good was not new. Much of it, actually, was not new at all. I can disclose that a significant chunk of Corbyn’s speech was, in its essentials, written many years ago. Not by Corbyn, of course, but by the writer Richard Heller. Mr Heller (with whom I should say I have
Jeremy Corbyn’s speech was excellent. It was passionate, full of campaigning zeal, focused on issues that the MP has campaigned on for years, and well-received in the hall. The new Labour leader came across as warm, principled, personable, fun. He was introduced in a lovely, low key fashion by a member of his own constituency party, whose own life story summed up his own values. He opened with jokes about the media claiming that he was keen for an asteroid to destroy the earth (more on this and his opposition to PIGEON BOMBS here), and these went down well – both amongst the activists and the media sitting in the
Jeremy Corbyn has just delivered his first conference speech as Labour leader. Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the address in this View from 22 special — looking at his delivery, the reaction in the hall, who it was meant to appeal to and whether it will change Corbyn’s standing with the general public. You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer every week, or you can use the player below:
As Jeremy Corbyn made his speech to conference, Labour’s new frontbench did their best to put on a united front on the front row. As for the frontbenchers of Labour’s past? Well, it could hardly be described as a show of solidarity. Both Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt were nowhere to be seen at the speech, with ITV’s Chris Ship reporting that they had already left Brighton on a train: Somewhere between Brighton & London Victoria stations is a train carriage with @ChukaUmunna @TristramHuntMP & @MaryCreaghMP escaping #Lab15 — Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) September 29, 2015 While Hunt did at least tweet supportive messages to Corbyn during the speech, Umunna has maintained a radio silence. On top of failing
Jeremy Corbyn has just finished delivering his speech at Labour’s annual conference. The audio can be listened to here: Friends, thank you so much for that incredible welcome and Rohit, thank you so much for that incredible welcome. Rohit, thank you so much for the way you introduced me and the way our family and you have contributed so much to our community. That was absolutely brilliant. Thank you very much. I am truly delighted to be invited to make this speech today, because for the past two weeks, as you’ve probably known I’ve had a very easy, relaxing time. Hardly anything of any importance at all has happened to me.
There’s a hard, hard mood out there among the public and I don’t think our newspapers get it at all. Could it be that the general populace are now more cynical than their journalists? At Tim Farron’s closing speech to his Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth last week, I sat through nearly an hour of one of the biggest cartloads of sanctimonious tosh it’s been my fate to endure in decades. And who do you suppose was lapping this up as avidly as any misty-eyed Lib Dem conference-goer? The hardened hacks, the sketchwriters, analysts and reporters. The press are old-fashioned: they love this emotional stuff. But the 21st-century public have
Jeremy Corbyn is supposed to come to Scotland this week. Thursday’s visit will be his first since he became leader of the erstwhile people’s party. Then again, he’s been due to visit before only to find some better use of his time so who knows whether he can brave life beyond the wall this week? Yesterday John McDonnell, Jezzah’s vicar, used his speech to the Labour conference to plead with Scottish voters to “come home” to the party. It was past time, he suggested, that voters understood that the SNP are no kind of socialist revolutionaries. Which will not come as any great surprise to most Scots. That’s part of the
Jeremy Corbyn has, so far, had a reasonably good conference. Nothing has gone noticeably wrong. There have been no stand-up rows, no fights in the fringes, no heckling in the hall. And the atmosphere has been far better than Labour’s awful autumn conference last year, where everyone was full of gloom when the party was a few points ahead in the polls. But the Labour conference was still going to plan at this point last year, albeit in a moribund way. Ed Miliband hadn’t delivered his speech yet, and he therefore hadn’t forgotten to mention the deficit (the speech was poor, too, but the overall quality was quickly eclipsed by
Lisa Nandy’s first conference speech as shadow energy and climate change secretary was solid and cordially received, if a little uninspiring. The MP for Wigan is one to watch in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet because she is frequently cited as a handover candidate — someone Corbyn could pass the leadership to before the 2020 election. Nandy’s announcement that Labour won’t seek to nationalise the Big Six energy companies is an example of how she is helping to detoxify Team Corbyn and assuage the fears of voters who think the new leadership is too left wing (it’s also yet another u-turn after Nato, Trident, EU membership): ‘Jeremy and I don’t want to nationalise energy. We want to do something
The Labour party may have avoided a divisive vote on Trident this week, but that doesn’t mean that it can always avoid working out whether it should have a new position. Last night Maria Eagle, the Shadow Defence Secretary, told a fringe that though she had made her mind in 2007 that she was in favour of the renewal of the nuclear deterrent, she wouldn’t have resigned had there been a vote that called for Trident to be scrapped at this conference. She said she’d reminded Corbyn when he offered her the job that she was pro-Trident, saying ‘I thought I need to make sure he remembers what my position
A set of headlines about a political party leader declaring that he loves his country might, in less unsettled times, be considered a sign that news desks have given up and are going to report all instances of dogs biting men. But in the man-bites-dog-world in which Jeremy Corbyn has just been elected Labour leader and John McDonnell appointed his Shadow Chancellor, it’s news. It’s also the first set of reasonably good headlines for the new leader, which is in part because his media team is working much better with the media now. (though you can’t win ’em all) Corbyn is expected to say: ‘These values are what I was
Why does Labour conference feel so even-tempered so far? In previous years the answer would be that it has been stage-managed to the hilt and all frontbenchers programmed with the lines to take. But this year the party’s conference strapline is ‘Straight talking. Honest politics’ and frontbenchers aren’t being sent daily lines to take, so even if they wanted to be on message, they couldn’t be. Of course, those frontbenchers are enjoying telling fringes that they take one view while their leader takes another, but what’s still remarkable about this conference is how good natured all the fringe meetings have been after a vicious leadership contest. Those running were abused
The New Statesman holds the best party of the Labour conference – but Chuka Umunna was the guest of honour and no sign of the leader. Where was Jeremy Corbyn? Toasting his success with his new comrades? Striking a new alliance with the editor of the Daily Mirror? Mr S understands that the Labour leader shunned the more glitzy parties on offer at his first conference as leader in favour of a quiet meal with his friends at Jamie’s Italian. Corbyn was joined for his Italian dinner by John McDonnell and a couple of close aides. With no flunkies or security guards in sight, the group feasted on pizza and tap water
The new shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, told us to expect him to sound like a mild bank manager when he gave his speech today. He ended up sounding like he was auditioning for the remake of Citizen Smith. How many bank managers end their speech by actually scripting a Wolfie-style yawp of ‘Solidarity!’? Perhaps this is all mild and relatively sane by McDonnell’s standards: if so, it offers us an interesting glimpse of the madness which now has the Labour party in its grip. His speech was supposed to be all nuance, policy reviews and open debate but strip that away and you’re left with some of the most deranged,
After Labour’s disastrous election result, Ed Miliband’s spin doctor Tom Baldwin made a swift exit from Labour HQ. For many in the party this was a welcome move; the king of spin was blamed for a number of election gaffes, including allegedly telling the BBC’s Nick Robinson that Miliband saw the HSBC scandal as ‘another Milly Dowler moment’. Despite this, it appears that old habits die hard. Steerpike understands that Baldwin has been spied in the the press office at Labour party conference. Is the spinner making a return to party politics? Given that Baldwin not only has feuds with journalists on a number of nationals, but also wrote a post-election editorial accusing the BBC of showing bias against
I warn you this is not my usual rant, they get me into trouble and I’ve promised Jeremy to behave myself. Jeremy and I sat down at the beginning of his campaign for the Labour leadership to discuss what they call the strap line for his campaign leaflets and posters. We came up with the strapline you see now. Straight talking, honest politics. It just embodied for me what Jeremy Corbyn is all about. So in the spirit of straight talking, honest politics. Here’s some straight talking. At the heart of Jeremy’s campaign, upon which he received such a huge mandate, was the rejection of austerity politics. But austerity is