Lauded as a winner in 2024, Starmer always dutifully undertook the leader\u2019s traditional role of meeting the troops, but barely survived<\/a> the 2025 conference. His precarity came across in selfies in which he never looked less than awkward. Conversely, such is Burnham\u2019s propensity for banter that a guard of \u201cbig lads\u201d were charged with standing around him to prevent mobbing (as one of them told me). <\/p>\n 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. \u201cMassacre\u201d, \u201cwipeout\u201d, and \u201cbloodbath\u201d were worn smooth through overuse. But they proved not to be exaggerations. May 6 2026 \u2013 an extinction-level event for the party \u2013 was not survivable for its leader. <\/p>\n 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 \u2013 or lack of it.<\/p>\n The branding of this conference was in itself remarkable. \u201cHope Again\u201d 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. <\/p>\n 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\u2019s try that one more time. There may be more hope, but there is also less time.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s surprise foreign speaker was the prime minister of Norway. \u201cIt\u2019s fun to be elected,\u201d Jonas Store told a fullish main hall, \u201cbut it\u2019s better to be re-elected.\u201d Burnham, sitting next to him, nodded appreciatively.<\/p>\n No issue animates activists \u2013 and demonstrators outside \u2013 more than Palestine, and foreign secretary Ed Miliband lanced that particular boil with pointed atonement for Starmer\u2019s perceived indulgence of the Israeli government over Gaza<\/a>. Sanctions on settlements<\/a> is policy almost written by Labour delegates. Last year they had to content themselves with passing a motion; this year there was no need.<\/p>\nMore hope, less time<\/h2>\n
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