This may be premature, because we have not yet had Jeremy Corbyn’s speech, but after four full days in Liverpool, it is possible to make some judgments about what has emerged from this year’s conference.
1) Jeremy Corbyn’s re-election has strengthened his position in the party – but it hasn’t decisively altered the balance of power
Normally the moment after an election victory is when a leader is constrained the least. But for Corbyn there is no one left to sack, any frontbench promotions will be determined by who offers to serve, not whom Corbyn picks, and, as the struggle over the national executive rule changes showed, Corbyn cannot depend on getting Labour’s key decision-making body to do what he wants. Significantly, within two days of his re-election, Corbyn effectively conceded that, for now, at least, he is giving up trying to change party policy on Trident. This is a significant retreat on an issue on which Corbyn has campaigned all his life.
2) Labour now feels like two parties that don’t like each other any more but cannot afford to get divorced
There has been no serious talk at all about a split, because the mechanics of the electoral system make that suicidal and both sides are emotionally attached to the Labour brand. However, there is a vast gulf between the pro-Corbyn and anti-Corbyn camps. Superficially the divide is about policy, but much more it is about whether people are prepared to make an emotional investment in Corbyn’s poll-defying idealism. Labour has become a coalition and, as Owen Jones suggested in a recent essay, one way forward might be a proper coalition agreement. And perhaps a quad, with Corbyn, John McDonnell, Tom Watson and Hilary Benn? They could ask David Cameron and Nick Clegg for some advice.
3) Corbyn has made little progress over the last year in fleshing out a policy platform
The Labour MP Kerry McCarthy, who resigned from the shadow cabinet, told the Guardian recently that she had never seen Corbyn “move beyond things you could fit on a T-shirt” in his policy thinking and this conference seems to bear that out. A year ago, after his surprise election as leader, Corbyn could be forgiven for only having an outline view as to what he would do. This year he has barely moved on and conference has been relatively light on policy. McDonnell did give a speech with a clear set of economic proposals but almost none of them have been worked up in any detail and his headline announcement (a £10 minimum wage) was something he promised last year. Corbyn is also proposing a £500bn investment plan, but the party has released no detail about this and at the moment the plan seems to amount to nothing more than a figure on a press release. On economic policy, and even more so in other areas such as education and welfare, there is little evidence that the party has started taking difficult choices, or started engaging seriously with outside bodies on legislative proposals.
4) Corbyn’s critics are not united
At the time of the “coup”, shadow ministers announced their resignations on an hour-by-hour basis in a move that was clearly coordinated. But since Corbyn’s re-election on Saturday there has been no agreed, group response from the MPs who left the frontbench in the hope of forcing him out. A few have said publicly that they would be willing to go back, a few more may have been speaking to Corbyn privately, and Corbyn seems confident to have enough names to be able to announce a reshuffle next week. Another group may be willing to go back, but want to delay so that they can use the offer of going back as a bargaining tool to try to get Corbyn to accept some form of shadow cabinet elections. A third group seem determined to remain on the backbenches for good.
5) Corbyn is probably safe at least until 2018
There is now a general recognition on the part of Corbyn’s critics that this summer’s leadership challenge achieved nothing and speculation about another leadership contest next year seems to have vanished. At the very least Corbyn should be safe until 2018, although there is also a widespread view that he will be able to remain leader until the general election if he wants to. After the EU referendum, MPs used the prospect of an early election as an argument for challenging Corbyn immediately. But, now that he has won, it is Corbyn who is exploiting the “early election” threat and is citing it as a reason why MPs should back him.
6) Labour is split over how to interpret the Brexit vote
Many MPs believe that immigration was a key factor and increasingly there are calls for the party to abandon its commitment to the free movement of labour. But Corbyn sees the Brexit vote as primarily a vote against the economic status quo and, as he confirmed this morning, he is opposed to immigration controls. Interestingly, this is one issue where Labour’s old right, which is sceptical about immigration, disagrees with the pro-free movement Blairite right. On this topic Corbyn is a Blairite.
7) Labour’s leaders outside Westminster are more important to the party than ever
Devolution and the creation of elected mayors have created a new powerbase within British politics and Corbyn’s opponents see it as offering the party a lifeline. Sadiq Khan openly paraded his credentials as an alternative leader this week. Carwyn Jones, the Welsh first minister, is being encouraged to develop a UK profile so that he can show English voters what a pragmatic Labour government can achieve. Mayoral elections next May should see other Labour figures taking executive office and in his speech on Tuesday Tom Watson said these figures, and Labour councillors, would be the ones who led Labour back to power. Not Corbyn, he implied.
8) In person Labour members are much more civil to each other than anyone would guess from reading the papers
In the run-up to conference some people were predicting 1980s-style fights. In practice it has been very peaceful. The level of heckling is not much worse than at an average conference, there have barely been any raised voices and the only punch thrown occurred when Clive Lewis (reportedly) hit a wall because he was angry about Corbyn’s office interfering with his speech. That is not to say that the social media abuse has not been real. But Twitter is a real world, not the real world, and in real space, if not cyberspace, Labour members seem to get on.
9) Momentum is not Militant, and it can run a lively, successful conference
One of the highlights of Liverpool has been Momentum’s The World Transformed alternative conference (or festival, as it prefers to call it), taking place about half a mile away. Anyone turning up expecting a Militant re-enactment will have been disappointed. Outside there were older, hardcore lefties selling “deselect your MP” literature. But as journalists such as Andrew Grice (here) and Paul Mason (here) report, inside it was full of young, earnest, welcoming activists seemingly with no interest in becoming the next Derek Hatton. In the long run it is still not clear what impact Momentum will have on Labour, but this week its reputation has improved.
10) Corbyn has no obvious successor
Most parties normally have an unofficial leader-in-waiting. Often they never get the job (Yvette Cooper filled this role for Labour for much of the last parliament), but nevertheless the ULIW carries some clout. At Liverpool the position is vacant. Clive Lewis’s standing as a potential, Corbyn-lite alternative leader is improving (for reasons Stephen Bush explains here), and some Corbyn-sceptics, such as Chuka Umunna and Lisa Nandy, have been prominent on the fringe. But for the moment Corbyn is unassailable.
