'Labour Conference needs reform – right now it's a week for party windbags'
I doubt there will be a Labour Party conference next year.
If Rishi Sunak has the decency – and the guts – to go to the country in the summer, there’ll just be a victory rally. And not his.
If he limps on to the autumn before going to the polls, all the party gatherings will be abandoned.We might just be back in session again if he does a John Major and staggers on to the bitter end in January 2025.
But the wrath of voters forced to wait all winter for the inevitable would be devastating. The Tories wouldn’t just be defeated, they’d be annihilated.
Meanwhile, after attending my 51st conference, I have to ask what is the point of Labour’s annual jamboree? All those motions, points of order, block votes, compositing, amendments and references back. It’s a pointless charade, copied from trade union shindigs.
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Conference’s supposed sovereign policy-making role is a polite fiction. The leader and his close associates decide what goes into the election manifesto, not the “delegates” (as I’ve heard them called).
Tony Blair hated conference and tried to supplant it with the National Policy Forum, but that simply duplicated the bureaucratic talk-fest. It’s time the people’s party (which I joined in 1986) stumbled into the 21st century and streamlined its policy-making.
To begin with, merge the two bodies into one, and reform the constitution so it reflects political reality. Cut down on the grotesquely-bloated fringe. And they should go back to Blackpool, or better still, Scarborough.
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Judges have been told not to bang up convicted rapists and other serious criminals because the jails are full. Can there be a clearer indictment of this government’s failure to govern?
The prison population has soared to 88,016 and is likely to rise to 94,400 within 18 months, but there is nowhere to put them.
And the politicians in charge serve shorter time than a shoplifter. The Tories have gone through TEN Justice Secretaries since 2010, including Chris “Failing” Grayling who trashed the probation service, and useless Liz Truss, pictured.
Yet they parade themselves as the party of law and order. They should be in the dock for malfeasance in public office.
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Bedbugs are terrorising the people of Luton, Beds, with reports of a spike in infestations.
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They may be coming from France, where outbreaks have panicked Paris. It’s serious.
London Mayor Saddiq Khan has ordered a deep clean of the city’s Tubes and buses.
How long before Home Secretary Cruella Braverman accuses migrants of bringing les punaises de lit over on their boats, in a fiendish French plot to thwart Brexit?
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“When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a tramp” comedian Billy Connolly confessed yesterday. I know! I know! I was the same, and still am. I can’t see a road without wanting to take it.
Billy, aged 80 and with Parkinson’s disease, revealed his boyhood dream in a radio interview.
He was inspired by the sight of a tramp enjoying a jam sandwich. I got the bug from WH Davies’ book, The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp.
Like Billy, I use a stick so serious walking is out, but I’d love to get “on the road again”.
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