Evening Standard comment: Why Labour’s meeting in Liverpool matters

Even for political junkies, the party conferences in the second year of a Parliament are usually ones to miss. The post-election autopsies are over but the pre-election build-up hasn’t begun. This time is different. There was no usual clear-out of the losing team after last year’s election because all the teams lost. The old leaderships remain in place, though the MPs of all parties would like to be rid of their leaders. The lethal combination of Brexit and a hung Parliament means predicting the date of the next election difficult. That’s why it’s worth looking to the Labour Conference in Liverpool if you want to know some of the answers to the big questions facing British politics today.

First, who is coming up with policies to address the alienation many in the population clearly feel towards the status quo? You may think, as we do, that John McDonnell’s plans to give workers 10 per cent of the shares of private companies and renationalise the water industry will only deter investment and damage productivity. But they are concrete policies that deserve serious scrutiny. For all the talk from Downing Street about addressing the “burning injustices”, can anyone remember a single policy to address them — and does anyone think this will be the main topic of conversation when the Tories meet next week in Birmingham? No. It’s dangerous for a government when it’s the opposition that starts setting the policy agenda.

Second question, is Brexit going to happen? Certainly, that is what the Conservative Government intends — even though all of its most senior members think privately that the country is making a historic mistake. Until now, Jeremy Corbyn and his henchmen agreed that Brexit should go ahead. What the likes of Mr McDonnell and Len McCluskey realise is that leaving the EU opens the door not to the small-state nirvana that the rich Brexiteer backers deluded themselves the leave voters wanted but to their socialist utopia — state aid controls from Brussels on interfering in free markets will disappear. That’s why the Corbynistas did nothing in the referendum campaign to support a Remain vote, and have done nothing to overturn the result.

Second referendum

But now these believers in mass membership democracy have been hoisted by their own revolutionary petard. The Labour members want a second referendum. So do the TUC. Their unlikely champion, Tony Blair, sets out powerfully the reasons here. The motion to be put to conference, finally agreed last night, that the option of a second referendum is “on the table”, feels like a fudge — but that in itself represents movement from the previous position of absolute opposition. That was confirmed this morning when the shadow chancellor said: “We want a People’s Vote if we can’t get a general election.” It remains hard to see how such a referendum could be forced on a government seemingly implacably opposed but the chances of it happening have gone from close to nothing to merely unlikely.

Final question, are we going to have that election? When Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said over the weekend that talk of one was “for the birds”, it’s worth remembering that: a) that’s what ministers always say about election speculation; b) that’s what Theresa May said two months before calling the last one; c) Mr Raab won’t be anywhere near the room in Downing Street where it is, apparently, under discussion.

An early poll still seems unlikely as the only thing the Tories agree on is that they should avoid committing to a second act of political suicide; but one can no longer be completely dismissed. The parallel meetings in Westminster today of the hard Tory Brexiteers and the Cabinet to discuss separate ideas for EU withdrawal reminds us just how divided the governing party is becoming, after the Brexit truce collapsed at Chequers. The PM’s indignation after her predictable humiliation in Salzburg last week rallied the Tory troops but it cannot conceal the lack of a either a plan or a majority to land a deal with the EU. It has all the feel of the Grand Old Duke of York.

Look at British history: when parties are split, parliaments are hung and intractable issues present themselves, the political world moves towards fresh elections and new referendums.