The Most Important Things We Learned at This Year's Labour Conference

As I write this, Big JC's just given his second speech of the Labour party conference in Liverpool, bringing things to a close. He drew on the city's history to try to bridge the gap between criticisms that, under him, Labour is just a party of protest, and that it needs to get into government.

"I know some people say campaigns and protests don't change things, but the Hillsborough families have shown just how wrong that is," he said, before emphasising that yep, Labour does need to get back into power.

After this, Corbyn continued his rhetorical tactic of listing lots of nice things he'd like to achieve. So I'm going to steal Corbyn's style here, by listing some stuff I found out while I was at the conference.

PEOPLE ARE ARGUING ABOUT MIGRANTS
Some in the party are very keen to discuss the "legitimate concerns" around migration. In particular, Rachel Reeves said that, "We have got to get this right because [there are] bubbling tensions in this country that I just think could explode." Chuka Umunna, meanwhile, reckons losing freedom of movement would be worth it to stay in the single market.

It's quite weird, really, when you think about how upset the same elements of the party are with Corbyn's failure to go HAM on campaigning for Remain in the referendum. Broadly speaking, the message is: the EU as a vague concept is so important it's worth having a leadership coup over, but the concrete realities of it such as freedom of movement are actually terrible and we should get rid of them.

Corbyn, meanwhile, used his conference speech to say he wouldn't be making any "false promises" about migration, and would emphasise "investment and assistance, not racism and division".

NOBODY KNOWS WHAT TO DO ABOUT BREXIT
The Conservatives' lack of clarity about what Brexit actually means is being used as a stick with which to beat them, but nobody's really got a vision or concrete policy proposal as far as I can tell. To be fair, I guess it's really hard to oppose a policy before you know what it is.

DESELECTION IS GOING TO BE THE NEXT BIG ARGUMENT
Every non-Corbynista MP is freaking out about the possibility of members voting them out of the right to run for MP again at the next election. Corbyn's fans think this will get rid of disloyal snakes. Party modernisers/moderates/right-wingers/evil red-Tories think this will get rid of their careers, and talented MPs. It's this kind of thing that turns disagreements into a fight to the death, which means…

THE CIVIL WAR ISN'T OVER
As I found out at a rally held by Progress – an organisation to the right of the party – at least a few of Corbyn's opponents aren't just going to suck up the leader's second mandate. I watched MPs queue up to say that they can't surrender the party, and that Tony Blair's government was sick.

Perhaps more surprising is some acknowledgement from Progress that they actually need a positive proposal and a strategy beyond loud whining.

WE'RE GOING TO HEAR A LOT ABOUT AN EARLY ELECTION
Which isn't really that likely. But if Labour's worried that the Tories will call a snap election then they might stop pulling each other's hair out for a bit.

THERE ARE STILL SOME AWKWARD QUESTIONS ABOUT ANTI-SEMITISM HANGING AROUND
The anti-Semitism scandal that rocked the party in April wasn't based on all that much evidence (at least until Ken Livingstone piped up), but it doesn't mean that there's nothing to see here, with a Labour Friends of Israel member claiming they were on the end of anti-Semitic attacks by attendees.

Meanwhile, Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker is facing calls to resign after making some unfortunate remarks like, "I still haven't heard a definition of antisemitism that I can work with." Yeeeeesh.

LESS CORPORATE SUCKING UP
There seem to be fewer corporate stands in trying to influence the party compared to previous years. Corbyn fans will probably be pretty happy that big business isn't trying to tell Labour what to do, but that might have something to do with how far from government the party seems to be.

CORBYNISM ISN'T THE ONLY CULT OF PERSONALITY
A strange devotion to an unpopular leader complete with odd rituals? That'll be the young Labourites who sung "Things Can Only Get Better" while chanting "Tony, Tony, Tony" at the socialist karaoke.

LOOK FORWARD TO THE END OF ZERO HOUR CONTRACTS
Jeremy said he'd ban zero hour contracts in his speech, which means it will definitely happen.

LABOUR'S GOING TO INVEST
The main meat of Corbyn's speech was posing Labour as the party of investment in the future, contrasting with the Tories' cuts (duh). They're going to do this with a new £500 billion investment bank for infrastructure. They also said they'd build 60,000 council homes a year, which is nice.

THERE ARE STILL SOME THINGS TO UNITE AROUND
Before conference, Tom Whyman wrote in VICE that Labour should "build their alternative by trying to stop whatever bad things are happening right now". That seems to have been borne out by conference speeches, which are all concerned about the same things: the destruction of the NHS, grammar schools and uncertainty over Brexit.

There are different visions within the party, but Labour mostly agrees on the things that suck.

@simonchilds13

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