The Battle Lines
Normally, the party conference season is one big yawn. Most of the coverage fit for fish and chip wrapping almost before the ink’s dry on the page. But this year was different. Very different, as the three weeks of conflicting ideas will define debate for the next three years. Labour’s win in Thursday’s central London by-election was just a spin-off.
The contest on Keir Starmer’s old patch after he’d been biffed out of Number Ten could have gifted the seat to the Greens if the new PM weren’t so well liked.
In the event the votes cast in Holborn and St Pancras proved the Burnham bounce is real.
Of course there’s more to it than that. For a start the Green Party leader Zack Polanski’s defeat strongly suggests his star has waned.
This maybe in part because he didn’t nip in the bud his activists’ labelling Zionism as racism, thus leaving the lot of them open to the charge of antisemitism.
But whether the Greens are a bit insurgent or a bit fringe is a detail. What really matters is whether Labour or the Tories are winning. And why.
The big takeaway from their big bashes is, at long last, a bit of clarity from both of them.
In the blue corner this is partly because, after a totally wobbly start, Kemi Badenoch has firmly established herself as leader.
At the beginning she was lashing out here there and everywhere, but nowhere in particular. The joke was she’d pick a fight with her own shadow if there was no one else in the room.
But now she’s steadied, focussed, and figured out a message.
And, spelt out last week, it went down a storm with the party faithful. Because it added up to a good old dose of born-again Thatcherism.
Maggie would say: ‘I love a good fight.’ And Kemi followed up with: ‘There is a fight coming that we have not seen in this country for more than half a century.’
The Tory-supporting Telegraph proudly proclaimed her pitch was designed to help the better off. All about wealth and aspiration, it sighed, contentedly.
No question, plenty of folk will love her promise to abolish inheritance tax on family homes. Likewise couples being allowed to leave an extra million pounds tax free.
Against that, she does plan paring down state spending on industry and infrastructure. Also, lopping bits off public services and benefits. Which, same as Mrs T, will be sold as tough love.
But will the punters buy it? Even one of her own ministerial team privately confessed: ‘The way we are going, we risk being seen as the nasty party again.’
That phrase was coined decades back by the then party chair Theresa May, who worried that it was offering too many freebies to the few – at the expense of the many.
No question Badenoch was trying to woo back folk who’ve drifted rightwards to Nigel Farage’s Reform party. She even risked joking about defecting senior ex-colleagues, calling them drama queens.
Oh how they laughed.
But she does at least share one serious hope with Burnham. That the visible waning in Reform’s support will turn into a puncture big enough to bring the whole hot air balloon crashing to earth.
That’s the only thing, mind, that the two of them have in common. As the vision outlined by the Prime Minister a week earlier could hardly have been more different from hers.
Yes, he too did go for the historic perspective. Only in his case it was a defence of the active state that once upon a time used to roll its sleeves up and actually do stuff for the common good.
Certainly intended for it. And, he argued, mostly achieving it. In short, Thatcherism was bad.
That might just resonate in Reform-minded areas oop north that were torn to bits when the Iron Lady first saw off the striking miners, then effectively shut down heavy industry.
Against that, and maybe thinking ahead to the Christmas panto season, Badenoch reprised a line regarding the Blessed Margaret’s bad legacy: ‘Oh no it wasn’t.’
Could go either way, that one, when you think about it.
Tony Blair ruefully but wisely pointed out in his memoir: ‘Most people, most of the time, don’t give politics a first thought all day long.’
Nonetheless, while the word ‘vibe’ does tend to get overused in political commentary these days, it is what both Labour and the Tories are hoping capture just now.
They, and all the others incidentally, will be poring over polls over the next weeks in the hope that something they’ve said will have landed somewhere.
Certainly, the latest from YouGov gave Labour a nice little uplift, putting them a cool seven points in front of the Tories. But that was before Badenoch’s big speech at the conference. So we’ll see.
Either way, they’ll keep on banging away with the same diametrically opposed themes from now right up until the next general election, no matter when it is.
Meantime, another input that could skew things in the very near future is the budget, now little over a fortnight away.
No one really knows what’s going to be in it, but the latest speculation is that the Chancellor’s working up a cunning plan to somehow get companies to cut their energy bills for less well-off folk.
Given that they might be whacking them up for everyone in the new year, the Treasury’s hoping any slack being cut will raise a cheer.
Overall though, officials are trying to play down too many expectations.
Big bouncy rabbits out of hats aren’t looking especially likely then, particularly as Donald Trump’s wonderful wheeze in Iran continues to pick the nation’s pocket.
Still, there are also fun surprises to had Stateside. Not least for punters goggling at performances across America of The Amazing Acro-Cats.
Yes, that’s right, Acro-Cats, not to be confused with acrobats, though the very idea of performing felines does sound pretty batty.
They do it though, leaping from eight-foot poles onto someone’s back, jumping through hoops, skateboarding, balancing on balls, driving toy cars, even playing the clarinet. Awesome.
That of course, is only when they’re in the mood.
If they feel like strutting off mid act, or having a good groom or whatever, a human holds up a card that reads ‘one moment please’, and prays that’s all it’ll turn out to be.
It all started when the troupe’s founder, Samantha Martin, adopted a cat called Tuna when her neighbour in Chicago failed to come back from an overseas trip.
The fifteen of them are persuaded to perform by means of treats.
Not just any old treats, mind. The theatre’s chef/bus driver whips up chicken breasts, turkey, two flavours of liver, salmon and duck. Also, a mash of blueberries, cucumbers, tomatoes and corn.
‘Dogs are like, I’ll do anything. It doesn’t even matter if there’s a treat involved,’ Samantha explains. ‘But cats are like, what you got? They want to know what’s in it for them.’
What’s in it for them? A bit like us lot then, weighing up which party to vote for.
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