The Labour Party conference in Liverpool this week was a nervy business, party activists traipsing its corridors, all a little more glum than might have been expected. Labour almost never wins and secures landslide victories even more rarely, yet if a word summed up the mood it was anxiety. Angst, probably, about what is to come – a sense that this might be as good, politically, as it gets.
Political constipation among Labour activists, almost conditioned to assume the worst, is hardly new. But the inept response to the largely trivial stories that comprise “freebiegate”, coupled with a lack of political will among the Labour family to countenance more “difficult decisions”, has led to long faces and furrowed brows. Throw in the infighting reportedly gripping No 10 and a Tory press which has turned on this Labour administration even earlier than anticipated, and we had a conference which felt odd, even a little listless. Everyone, including broadcasters guided by the noisy, frenzied papers and their even noisier online pied pipers, distracted by ephemera.
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