“The mood of the party?” A reliable opening question between news presenter and political journalist. Necessarily imprecise, the answer can still transport the listener or viewer to where they aren’t. Doing so from Liverpool this week invokes the other meaning of the word party. This was the conference that should have taken place in 2024 after Labour’s return to power. But it didn’t, owing to the stumbling of the government in general and the fumbling of the prime minister in particular. Keir Starmer’s first speech in office had dampened the mood, intentionally.
This year the Labour party conference was a happy place. The sun was shining; the branding was smiling: Andy Burnham’s beaming countenance ubiquitous.
Lauded as a winner in 2024, Starmer always dutifully undertook the leader’s traditional role of meeting the troops, but barely survived the 2025 conference. His precarity came across in selfies in which he never looked less than awkward. Conversely, such is Burnham’s propensity for banter that a guard of “big lads” were charged with standing around him to prevent mobbing (as one of them told me).
The tone was palpably different from a year ago. In September 2025, almost every conversation alighted on the prospects of the party in the May 2026 local elections in England, and the national elections in Scotland and Wales. “Massacre”, “wipeout”, and “bloodbath” were worn smooth through overuse. But they proved not to be exaggerations. May 6 2026 – an extinction-level event for the party – was not survivable for its leader.
The polls, fluid as they are, have shifted. Optimism, which is hard to define but easy to recognise, defined this conference. Next year, there will have been a year of delivery – or lack of it.
More hope, less time
The branding of this conference was in itself remarkable. “Hope Again” is as close as you can get to an explicit admission by a party in government that it has been failing. There was hope, in July 2024, with the election win. That government was reconstructed two years later under someone not even in parliament then.
That those related events came to pass was because that hope had been misplaced. Hope of winning the next election, hope of preventing a government comprising the radical populist right. Hope Again means: let’s try that one more time. There may be more hope, but there is also less time.
This year’s surprise foreign speaker was the prime minister of Norway. “It’s fun to be elected,” Jonas Store told a fullish main hall, “but it’s better to be re-elected.” Burnham, sitting next to him, nodded appreciatively.
No issue animates activists – and demonstrators outside – more than Palestine, and foreign secretary Ed Miliband lanced that particular boil with pointed atonement for Starmer’s perceived indulgence of the Israeli government over Gaza. Sanctions on settlements is policy almost written by Labour delegates. Last year they had to content themselves with passing a motion; this year there was no need.
The main event – the leader’s speech – was more than usually significant. For one thing, the leader mainly wrote it himself. The American writer Gore Vidal once described President Eisenhower delivering a speech with a real sense of discovery. That Burnham demanded authorship – and there may be advisers who wish his time were better spent – is central to his appeal.
Personal is authentic. Yet in the prominence of the individual there is also risk. This government is so clearly his, in a way Starmer’s wasn’t, and so it will be if it fails. There has never been so personalised a premiership as this.
Starmer saved his leadership last year – and sent Burnham off with a flea in his ear in the process – with a speech that was better than his usual. But he always came across almost as a figure from Greek mythology: half man, half lectern. Burnham has no need for so literal, and figurative, a prop. But his unplanned charm served to highlight the fact that he was not a natural platform speaker. The form seemed to constrain him.
In his speech to conference, he broke free. If anyone was in any doubt as to why the Labour party replaced its leader, they can be no longer. His speech, tears and all, was unlike any other. It reminded those who had forgotten why rhetoric matters.
Though there were lines as hoary as “hope in every heart”, the speech confounded Burnham sceptics. A national care service, electoral reform, pension reform, and the undoing of Brexit are policies of seismic significance. The “common good” of which he spoke had been destroyed in the 1980s.
And 1945 was an apt historical precedent for Burnham to cite: a Labour government with ambition unbounded. But he did not mention its circumstances being circumscribed. This government cannot reasonably be said to lack direction or purpose. It does, however, lack means and a mandate. Labour’s 2026 conference in its own terms was a triumph; for the government that is necessary but not sufficient.
Martin Farr does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.