Labour conference this year has been remarkably drama-free. There has been none of the scandal of recent years: no frontbench resignations or attempts to abolish the deputy leader. It has gone smoothly, and stands in stark contrast to the goings on outside Liverpool – where the markets have reacted viscerally to the Conservatives’ tax-cutting bonanza and the pound has fallen to historic lows. Kwasi Kwarteng’s “mini-budget” was not just a gift for Labour, but a very well-timed one. The opposition party has had four days of coverage to comment on the abysmal week that Liz Truss is having.
The party has quietly been putting some meat on the bones of its policy offer (although some of it has been a bit more of a confirmation than an unveiling – see Louise Haigh on renationalising the railways, for example). Starmer is countering Truss’s growth rhetoric with some economic growth plans of his own; he unveiled a plan to turn the UK into a “clean energy superpower” as conference kicked off and used his conference speech to tell the public that Labour will “fight the Tories on economic growth”.
