Party conference season is in full swing and I am in sunny Brighton with the Liberal Democrats. As I walk along the beach I am grateful for the advice I was given before my first political conference: wear trainers. It will soon prove even more crucial in the cavernous labyrinths of the Labour and Conservative conferences in Liverpool and Birmingham than it does on the pebbled seafront.
This conference is a Lib Dem victory lap. Posters with “The Most Lib Dem MPs Ever” adorn the exhibition hall, where there is also a wall built of blue foam bricks which attendees can have fun building up and knocking down. “Finishing the job” of breaking down the Blue Wall is priority number one.
When I sit down with Ed Davey on the afternoon of 16 September, the Lib Dem leader tells me why his party is taking the fight to the Conservatives. Partly, it’s a matter of arithmetic – the Lib Dems achieved their historic result by winning votes in former Tory heartlands from people fed up with the chaos of the Conservatives. (They didn’t take a single seat from Labour.) But he also sees the Tories as “a threat to Liberal Democrat values”. Davey is pitching for his party to be “a better opposition” to Labour than the divided Conservatives.
Opposing forces
Davey’s keynote speech doubles down on this message. He focuses on the NHS (health and social care is the big theme of this conference), saying the Tories “broke it so badly” and urging Labour “do not make the same mistakes the Conservative Party did”. It’s interesting positioning: promising to hold Keir Starmer’s government to account on health and social care while also emphasising that the Lib Dems agree with Labour on who the real enemy is. Davey claims “it will fall to us to be the responsible opposition that any government needs”. The Tories might have other ideas – but they are essentially leaderless at the moment, and Ed Davey is sweeping in to fill the opposition vacuum.
The Lib Dem libretto
This is my first Lib Dem conference and, therefore, my first experience of the traditional Lib Dem “Glee Club” event on Monday night. Picture hundreds of people crammed into a hotel conference room for a huge group singalong – only the lyrics are… well, Lib Dem. I immediately pay £5 for the official songbook, which contains gems such as “Lettuce Liz” (to the tune of the Beatles’ “Let It Be”) and “The Twelve Days of Coalition” (a take on the Christmas classic with the shouted refrain “And a referendum on AV – which we lost!”). The crowd favourite, however, is “The Land”, a protest anthem calling for land value taxation, which is sung twice in the first half hour. Let it never be said that Lib Dem politicos don’t know how to have fun.
Wardrobe wars
The big Westminster story breaking while I’m in Brighton is the row over clothes for Keir Starmer’s wife Victoria (“Vic”). It is reported that the Labour donor Waheed Alli (of recent No 10 access controversy) gave Lady Starmer designer clothes worth some £5,000 and which Starmer didn’t declare properly. It’s not quite on a level with Boris Johnson’s paid-for holidays to Mustique or the scandal about exorbitantly priced wallpaper, but for a politician so committed to a narrative of “tough choices” and his image as “Mr Rules”, it’s not a good look for the PM. It appears the failure to register the gifts was a genuine mistake and Starmer’s team thought they had followed the relevant rules. But anyone with good political instincts could predict how this would play out: with questions about why the Prime Minister and his wife can’t pay for their own clothes. It’s an unforced error and team Starmer should know better. That said, if any billionaire New Statesman readers want to contribute to the wardrobe of one scruffily dressed journalist, I’m a size 12 and open to donations.
Echoes of childhood
Back home, a parcel arrives. It’s a present for my parents: a framed photo of them, me, my husband and his children from our recent holiday in Switzerland. This is the third year I’ve taken my stepdaughters to the Alpine village my family has been visiting for three decades. It’s also the third year I’ve watched my parents guide them up the mountain slopes on which I spent my childhood summers. The paths have barely changed – same trees, lakes and panoramic views (now, alas, with more tourists since it became an influencer hotspot). The children love it, and I love watching them love it, although it feels strange, too. I remember so vividly being their height and bursting with pride at climbing my first mountain. When did I grow up?
[See also: Sigrid Rausing’s Diary]
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This article appears in the 18 Sep 2024 issue of the New Statesman, What’s the story?