Labour conference: Has the party lost its mojo already?
© Alamy Stock Photo It was former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson who is said to have coined the phrase “a week is a long time in politics”.
And I’m sure that saying resonated with the latest leader, Sir Keir Starmer, as he addressed the Labour Party conference in Liverpool this week.
It was just three months ago that Sir Keir was riding high on a wave of popularity after winning a stonking majority at the general election.
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And his newly appointed Defra ministers were able to bask in the glory over summer.
They took a victory lap at the Great Yorkshire Show, where they met farmers who gushed over the possibilities a new government offered.
Fast forward to now, and polling for Labour has plummeted to an average of below 30% – a record drop for a government in power for such a short period.
The party has faced immigration riots, taken the unpopular step of abolishing winter fuel credits and more recently been battered by the “cash for clothes” affair.
In farming circles, fears over the future of the agriculture budget have reached fever pitch, and there is further concern that Defra’s work more generally has been put on pause until chancellor Rachel Reeves has delivered her first Budget on 30 October.
Put this together with the wider woes facing the government, and you’ve got a party which has had its confidence knocked. One which, after working for years to win power, has been left almost afraid to wield it.
In Liverpool, it was hard to escape the feeling that the initial momentum the government displayed has been all but lost.
People who organised “fringe” events at the conference told me they found it difficult to get MPs to sit on panels, let alone ministers – with some battling multiple last-minute pull outs.
Perhaps this isn’t surprising, given that a huge number of the new intake MPs are still without staff and, by all accounts, are poorly briefed on the plethora of issues they’re now expected to tackle.
New Defra secretary Steve Reed, for his part, was remarkably absent on the fringe circuit – much to the upset of organisations that paid hefty sums to hold events. And he gave only a short speech in the main hall, which focused mostly on water quality.
Pre-election, this lack of policy detail on offer from Labour was lauded as politically savvy, but post-election, it no longer feels like smart politics.
Instead of a grand vision, what the party seems to be proposing – on farming as well as in other policy areas – is business as usual.
Farming minister Daniel Zeichner even noted during the NFU’s conference event that he had found himself in “the unusual position” of defending the last government.
He was talking specifically about the Rock Review recommendations for the tenanted sector, but could equally have been discussing the Environmental Land Management scheme.
Likewise on fairness in supply chains, the new minister promised to continue the work carried out by the Conservatives. A previously trailed announcement on Labour’s plans in this area, said to be “imminent” in the summer, has so far sunk without a trace.
On the one hand, a steady-as-she-goes approach will be welcomed by much of industry. But it’s hard to reconcile that with the “change begins” conference slogan emblazoned over much of Liverpool this week.
At the moment, it feels as though we may have simply replaced one Steve in grey (former Conservative Defra secretary Steve Barclay) with another – a possibility we were first alerted to by Farmers Weekly’s editor Andrew Meredith last year.
If Labour want to prove they’ve not lost their mojo, ministers will need to offer more to industry over the next few months than a fright at the Halloween Budget.