Gordon Brown’s big speech was sometimes more mangled by the subtitling on the TV screens in Manchester Central than John Prescott’s most garbled comments. Pieties became “pie yots”. Applause was “platz plau”. This kaleidoscopic interpretation parallels another conference reality: simultaneously breathing in a news event and being less aware of the news than on a normal working day. It seems to take a special effort at conference to seek out a TV to see how events are being reported (and fringes, receptions and bars are always more attractive to me). In contrast, in this highly networked, 24 hour news age, news coverage often seems virtually drip fed to us in more normal circumstances. The view from conference is one that is sufficiently close-up and worms-eye to create both a visceral sense of occasion and doubt as to the completeness of this perspective.
Brown’s speech inspired a sincere sense of purpose, determination and hope amongst the conference attendees that I spoke to. However, as I made my way to an IPPR fringe on the future of progressive politics, I was entirely in the dark about the extent to which this mood was reflected in media coverage and public opinion.
At the IPPR event Peter Kellner drew warm applause for the observation that there is a good case to be made for Labour changing our leader, as there is also a good case to be made for not doing so, but the worst of all worlds is created by the hobbled, half-way house that recent snipping and manoeuvring have created. He, consequently, implored Charles Clarke, another panellist, “to put up or shut up”. The presence of Sky News’ Glen Oglaza in the audience was my one window on the media. He enquired of Clarke whether Brown’s speech would resonate beyond Manchester. Clarke declined to answer directly but gave a hint as to his future intentions by saying to Kellner that he could take this to mean that he was “shutting up”.
John Denham and John Harris completed the cast of panellists, with all being fulsome in their praise of Brown’s speech. John Harris said that he received a text from a member of the government boasting that, “it was the most openly progressive speech he has ever made”. Harris argued that New Labour has pursued progressive ends by stealth but that popular concern about financial convulsions and their impacts created space for more overtly doing so. The government should rise to this “progressive moment” was his message.
Whether “progressive moment” is entirely the right description for a flirtation with a calamity of Great Depression proportions is a moot point. Certainly the political context seems to be rapidly evolving – and in ways potentially to Labour’s advantage. The end of the “Regan/Thatcher era” is being spoken of by such economic luminaries as Paul Krugman. One doesn’t need to be excessively enamoured with Marxist-structuralist reasoning to see economic events as forging a new path for politicians to follow. Catherine Mayer of Time argued at a fringe on Monday evening that this changed backdrop was to Barack Obama’s advantage in the presidential election but that Labour had so far failed to capitalise on the political opportunity that is presented to us, as a party more comfortable with market regulation and intervention than the Conservatives, by a much less laissez-faire popular attitude to laissez-faire economics.
Labour’s best hope would seem to be to have the grumblers/plotters (you decide) “shut up” and to unite behind Brown’s attempt to make a better first of this opportunity. As Brown takes forward the “new settlement” that his speech promised, we should work to ensure that the media is ultimately left to conclude that this also yielded a new Gordon; a popular, respected and general election winning prime minister.
Jonathan Todd is a Consultant at Europe Economics and a member of Dulwich and West Norwood Constituency Labour Party
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