Alastair Campbell is familiar with images and moods, he was Tony Blair’s head of media, he was what is called a “spin doctor”: the master of the news produced by and about Blair. Campbell was considered a PR genius, which inevitably means that the British media didn’t particularly like him, as the media prefer to produce their headlines and pictures themselves Labor Prime Minister in British history. So now ask Alastair Campbell: what do you think of what happened in Liverpool on Sunday?
The Labor Party is currently holding its party conference in Liverpool, and since Sunday there have been four days of meetings, discussions and votes in the conference center at the Docks. In the annual political cycle, party days are like the Christmas holidays, everyone comes together, talks and laughs, goes to bars in the evenings, and at the end plans for the new year are formulated. The 2022 party conference is the most important for Labor in years: the Tories, already badly plagued by Johnson, are stumbling from one disaster to the next under Liz Truss. The mood is bad in the country and thus fruitful for the opposition. In a Yougov poll over the weekend, Labor’s lead over the Tories was 17 per cent, the widest since 2001, since Tony Blair.
On Sunday, at the start of the party conference, Keir Starmer and his colleagues from the party leadership stood on the main stage in the modern hall, above them a huge screen showing a photo of the Queen. Everyone in the hall stood up and sang the anthem together, the new version: God Save the King. The republican left-wing Labor party sings the anthem with emotion, something that has never happened before.
There is no sign of Jeremy Corbyn in Liverpool
Campbell is not in Liverpool this week, he has resigned from the party and he says he is enjoying his freedom. The anthem, says the 65-year-old on the phone, now: “Images are important and Keir wants to show that the party has changed.” So he understands about the anthem. Under Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, Labor positioned itself so far to the left that the majority of Britons no longer saw them. Corbyn has since been expelled for allegations of anti-Semitism, but he was still everywhere at the party conference in Brighton last year, giving speeches to his supporters, and inside the hall the party argued. But in the end, Starmer won.
There is no sign of Corbyn or his supporters in Liverpool. Starmer has reformed Labor with a determination that has not pleased everyone, with 120,000 members resigning since he took over as chairman in January 2020. Campbell doesn’t see that as a major problem, why should he? Labor is now a smaller party but with greater harmony.
That’s another reason why the picture with the anthem was so important for Starmer, nobody shouted, nobody disturbed, everyone sang. But images only work with content, so Campbell is a little less enthusiastic than some of the participants spoken to in Liverpool these days. He thinks it’s important, says Campbell, that the party “talks more about the economy,” without getting bogged down in details, “because that can happen quickly on issues like this.” Simple slogans, understandable content, new ideas, everything in a continuous loop, that’s how the New Labor machine worked in the 1990s. Political PR still works like this, especially in times of tweets and posts.
The economy is currently the central issue in British politics. That the Conservative government has made things worse rather than better is an opportunity for Labor – embodied on finance by Rachel Reeves, who is Chancellor of the Exchequer in Starmer’s shadow cabinet. In her speech on Monday, she presented some key points of her policy, such as the return of the top tax rate for the highest income brackets that the Tories had just abolished, or a “genuine living wage”, a minimum wage that is no longer called the minimum wage and is a little higher target.
Starmer always seemed serious – but not very exciting
Above all, she keeps repeating one phrase: “It is time for a government that is on your side, and this government is a Labor government.” She says the sentence five times, in English it sounds a little more concise. Each time the applause in the hall is a little louder, at the end the members jump up and cheer as if Rachel Reeves had just announced the election victory.
Keir Starmer is sixty, 17 years older than Reeves, and in his two-and-a-half years as party leader, people didn’t always jump up enthusiastically when he spoke. He has earned a reputation: always competent, serious and calm-looking, but uninspiring and sometimes too academic. But Starmer has apparently found that it helps if he sometimes acts less than the Attorney General he used to be. On Monday evening, they even included their own event in the program, between votes and contributions: a conversation between Keir Starmer and Gary Neville, the former international and Manchester United footballer.
As Neville sits down next to Starmer, at the back of the room a woman, black Chucks, red jeans, turns to her neighbor and asks, “Who is that?” Neville, footballer. Aha, says the woman, never heard of it. She looks a little annoyed.
But it’s an entertaining hour, with Starmer discussing his love for Arsenal, recounting memories of goals in the 1980s. Neville, who analyzes games as a TV expert and is known for his political interest, says: It is important that “everyone behind Keir” united. Because Keir, says Neville, has everything a good prime minister needs: he is competent, serious, and has integrity. “Absolutely,” the woman exclaims, applauding now.
The excitement during Starmer’s fifty-minute speech is huge
When Starmer comes on stage for his closing speech on Tuesday afternoon, the first thing that strikes you is that he’s not alone. Additional seats for spectators were set up on the stage, reminiscent of images familiar from the US election campaign. Of the leader in the centre, surrounded by his fans and voters.
“The government has lost control of the British economy,” says Starmer, “don’t forget, don’t forgive”. He tosses out figures, like 10,000 new nurses for the health service, and announces that Labor will set up a state-owned energy company called Great British Energy in its first year in government. The United Kingdom should become, as he calls it, a “clean energy superpower”. Starmer even addresses the B-word: “I voted for Remain,” says Starmer, against Brexit. He doesn’t want to reverse Brexit, but “make sure that Brexit works”.
Starmer’s speech isn’t all that different from his previous speeches, it’s good but not great. But convention speeches rarely offer moments that are remembered for their content. It’s more about how the party reacts: images and moods. Over the past year in Brighton there have always been heckling and disturbances. Now, in September 2022, the atmosphere in Starmer’s party is most vividly reflected in the face of shadow Secretary of State David Lammy.
When Starmer asks the hall to shout “Slava Ukraini” together, Glory to Ukraine, many jump up and applaud happily. The cameras capture a close-up of Lammy looking up at Starmer on the stage. He has wet eyes.