Labour Party conference

I have to admit I wasn’t able to follow the Labour Party conference in as much detail as I would have liked.

However from what I have seen I get the impression that the conference didn’t really change anything.. We’re still no closer to knowing when Blair will go or who will replace him. Without Cherie’s outburst the conference would have been quite boring!

Both Blair and Brown gave the kind of speech you would expect of them. Blair set out where he still wants the Labour Party to go and turned his speech into a rallying call in the way only Blair knows how. Brown knowing he needs to show people more about his personal side, did exactly that. He focused on his past and where he came from using that to show where he would take Labour.

Alan Johnson appears to have had his David Davis moment with a poor performance on the conference stage. The charisma was certainly lacking on that day. John Reid on the other hand gave a very good speech in typical Reid style. Unlike Brown, he stuck to home affairs but managed to nicely link these with wider issues. This has meant Reid is now second favourite with the bookies to be the next Labour leader.

So despite the conference not really changing much, it did give the impression quite successfully of a united Labour and Blair’s lifting speech will certainly hit a cord with the voters.

Conference score 8/10

UPDATE (Sat 31st): The YouGov poll in today’s Telegraph carried out shortly after Blair’s speech puts the Tories on 36%, Labour on 36% and the Lib Dems on 16%. This is what I would expect a party conference to do to the polls, hence my previous post saying the Lib Dems should be worried. I await the poll after the Tory conference.