...no not that season, conference season.
Some may take a glance at the parliamentary calendar and wonder why parliamentarians have a period of recess merely a few weeks after their summer recess. The answer is, that block of time in the parliamentary calendar is filled by each party’s annual conference. Party conference season is a key moment in the year, for industry and civil society to gain access to government and parliamentarians, and is used by each political party to sound policies off against their committed membership, whilst drumming up funds to fill the war chests for future elections.
Despite its rather uninspiring name, ‘conference’ as it is colloquially labelled in Westminster, can be filled with drama and excitement. Margaret Thatcher for example silenced party and other critics with the phrase ‘this lady’s not for turning’ at the 1980 conservative conference, a quote that has gone down as one of the most famous riposte in British political history.
With Labour making significant gains against the Tories, in polls over the past month, and from what we have heard so far, this conference season will provide a window for:
- The Conservative government to outline post-Covid-19 policies, with an emphasis on ‘building back better’;
- Labour to put forward policies that speak to grassroots voters, while bridging the gap with more socially conservative voters in former heartlands;
- Lib Dems to solidify their shock Chesham and Amersham by-election win by putting forward policies that continue chipping into ‘One Nation’, former conservative party voters in the blue wall. A recent YouGov poll of conservative ‘Blue Wall’ seats in Southern England showed the Conservatives occupying a mere 44% (-8% since 2019 General Election) of the vote;
- the Scottish National Party to once again make the case for independence – with polling averages beginning to show ‘no’ as a likelier result of a referendum put to the Scottish people.
This week, we explore ‘what’s on’ at the conferences this year.
Conservatives – to level-up or not to level-up
Prime Minister Boris Johnson will be looking to use the occasion to praise the country’s COVID-19 vaccination rollout and put his post-pandemic vision to the party and country, with a lot of his keynote speech likely to focus on his ‘levelling-up’ agenda. Levelling-up was a key election policy for the Conservatives, which helped to propel the prime minister to his comfortable victory at the 2019 general election. Boris Johnson has outlined provisionally what levelling-up will mean for the country – including green investment jobs, transport, community regeneration and digital infrastructure. This agenda also presents an issue for the PM that may just unravel the political coalition that he built during the 2019 election.
In 2019, the PM was elected on ‘levelling-up’, when the public finances were in far better shape than they are now, due to COVID-19. Chancellor Rishi Sunak is grappling with how to manage the debt that the UK took on during the pandemic response. Additionally, the rapid opening of the economy has caused inflation, which is already raising weekly costs for British families. With the national debt needing to be paid off and day-to-day household expenses rising, the question the PM faces is not whether he can ‘level-up’ the country, but whether he should. British taxpayers, particularly traditionally middle-class conservative voters, already foresee taxes increasing, to pay off the UK’s debt burden and tackle other crises such as social care – so Boris Johnson will need to ask himself whether he is willing to drive a wedge through the party that could see traditional Conservative voting blocs moving to other parties.
One of those wedges takes the form of the prime minister’s green agenda – which he aims to place at the forefront of international diplomacy at November’s COP26 summit in Glasgow. Traditional Conservative voters in southern England are environmentally conscious and want to see the UK government blazing a trail on climate change. At the opposite end of the wedge are voters in traditionally Labour seats that gave their vote to the conservatives in 2019. These voters are wary of the financial impacts that green policies, such as the proposed gas boilers rumoured to cost £14,000 per household, could have on family finances. The PM will need to balance the interests of this coalition carefully to emerge unscathed.
Labour – who, what, why, how?
The leader of the opposition, Sir Kier Starmer has taken to the road this summer, to meet with voters across the nation and take the pulse of the country. Labour’s electoral fortunes have been few and far between since its election loss to the conservatives in the 2019 general election, with many of its traditional industrial voter base accusing the party of being out of touch. The key question for the party’s fairly fresh leader is this – can the Labour party conference 2021 produce the policy goods to repair the bonds broken with voters under the previous leadership? Many political pundits have argued that Labour’s opposition effort has been lacking substantive policy over the last year.
The narrative defining the Labour Party since 2019 has very much been ‘the wilderness years'. The party finds itself without identity, fighting both with itself and an incumbent prime minister that is committed to investing in Labour strongholds in order to bring prosperity to those areas. Labour’s crushing by-election loss in Hartlepool earlier this year illustrated the enormity of Starmer’s task. So what policies will Labour provide at the conference to shake off the reputation of ‘just oppose everything’, that plagues so many parties that have been out of power for long periods of time?
Green – the G7 in June showed us the global commitment to a green recovery from the pandemic. But many Governments have injected a dose of realism to the green agenda – highlighting the cost and timeliness of such structural transformations. Starmer has given us a hint here, within recent days, calling for a key US import. A new green deal. One that focuses on bringing green manufacturing jobs to communities.
Money – Labour has also recently replaced Anneliese Dodds with Rachael Reeves as shadow chancellor. With her experience in the financial sector, Reeves will be a key policy-maker in Labour’s drive to position itself as the ‘better’ economic choice for voters, shaking off the hangover of the 2008 crisis.
Through dribs and drabs, we are beginning to see the Labour that Starmer wants it to be. The conference should provide the forum he needs for outlining Labour’s alternative vision, which includes turning Labour ‘inside-out’ to win the next election.
The Lib Dems – for good measure
Yes, the Liberal Democrats do not currently occupy a government position at UK level or within the devolved nations, but they continue to poll around the 10% mark in national opinion polls. This might not seem like much, but their support is concentrated mostly in southern England, placing the party in an extremely consequential political position under the first-past-the-post electoral system.
At the conference, Lib Dem leader sir Ed Davey is likely to put policies to the Party that aim to chip away at the Tories in the ‘remain-voting’ south of England. If Chesham and Amersham taught the leadership anything, it’s that they have the correct formula to pose a real threat to the Conservatives in their ‘blue wall’. By chipping away at ‘blue wall’ anger over planning reform, countryside infrastructure projects and Brexit, the Lib Dems could well put Boris Johnson in a difficult electoral position prior to the next election – forcing him to ‘choose a side' between his traditional voters in the Shire counties and Conservative new voters in the North of England.