FT UK political commentator Robert Shrimsley says the party has adopted a raft of new economic, social and environmental policies in a bid to transform the country – if it can win a general election
The labour party conference brighton there are normally two ways to judge a party conference there’s the events and the excitement and the drama as it happens and then there’s the way we look back at it once the waters have closed over the immediate events it has done boris johnson has been found to mislead the country this unelected prime minister should
Now resign almost all the new stories about this conference will be brexit stories it started with a row over what the parties brexit position will be going into the general election and it ended with the response to the supreme court ruling on boris johnson’s prorogation of parliament but underneath the hood of the brexit conversations there’s a bigger story
Here which is that actually the party has adopted a number of extraordinary radical policies which if it got to carry them out would transform the country will reduce the average full-time working week to 32 hours within the next decade and i think when we look back at this conference and some of the noise of the brexit rau is gone we may look back at it as the
Moment when labour took a really dramatic shift in a number of his economic and social and environmental policies well scrap zero-hours contracts introduced a 10-pound living-wage including for young people from the age of 16 the tide is turning the years of retreat and defeats are coming to an end together we can take on the privilege and put people into power
Conference the labour party in our movement thank you for all you – thank you for the campaigning you do go forward to win an election for the people well jeremy corbyn’s just finished his leader speech brought forward a day because of the recall of parliament the conference is just singing the red flag and now jerusalem and this was very much a speech about
Building jerusalem in england’s green and pleasant land once you got past all of the brexit content which dominated the first half of the speech this was a very powerful speech of transformation and which would leave people in no doubt that a labour government led by jeremy corbyn would be one of the most radical ever elected in this country at the start of this
Conference i think there were three issues overshadowing it the first was brexit and whether the party would go into the election with a clear position the second was the leadership of jeremy corbyn not that he was under threat but the brexit have become a proxy fight for the succession and the third was the environmental policy which were extremely radical and
The rail with the unions over that it’s all been overshadowed by the brakes of the nasan from the supreme court but i think when people look back at this conference they will see that it’s been a very meaningful one in which labour has adopted a raft of really radical positions it’s back to 32 hour week it’s back the abolition of private schools and it’s back
To environmental policies with targets which are extraordinarily radical the decolonization of britain effective by 2030 the nationalization of the big six energy companies these are extraordinarily radical positions that cost fast amounts of money and drastically transform the economy i’ve been it’s what i’ve been waiting for was there any particular bit in
There you especially liked especially liked the fact that green is actually seen as an industrial revolution there’s a sense of unity in there which was just incredible to see a bit especially the beginning but your first time what did you make of it all absolutely brilliant i think jeremy he already for he was the best person to be prime minister but i now
Can’t picture anyone else being prime minister anymore our message is bring it on bring on that general election because we’re ready labour is ready and jeremy corbyn is ready so bring it on of course the fact that they’ll find it appealing is the easy part it’s also got to be implemented it’s got to be costed and that’s where you run to some very substantial
Difficulties the other thing i think that’s happened in this conference is where as people arrived feeling a bit unsure about what was coming whether the corbin’s project might founder after him this compass has been a very very affirmative one for him personally when the bricks of debate was going on a number of people pushing for a much clearer remain position
It became almost a question of loyalty to jeremy corbyn and he carried the day in his position care of the day particularly because people speaker after speaker stood up to say we have to be loyal to the leadership for the night the stores are all closed the party bigwigs are rushing back to london for the recall of parliament and although conference continues
Into wednesday the air has now gone out of it everybody knows that the action is elsewhere but the sense you get is that members feel they’ve been present at a moment of history and as you can see history plays a vital emotional role in the labor movement there is a sense among the party members that they have set themselves on course for a defining election
They’re bringing forward an agenda that is so radical so transformative that it inspires all of them here and keeps their faith with jeremy corbyn it’s an agenda that carries problems as well as opportunities it’s very expensive it’s very easy to attack by other parties but it also contains gobbets of policies all over the place that will appeal to different
Groups so there is an enormous sense of excitement among party members the excitement you get when people know an elections coming they can’t be sure it’s going to go their way but the one thing i think they’re all sure of is that this is an election that is going to be transformative for the future of britain you
Transcribed from video
Beyond Brexit: Jeremy Corbyn's radical Labour conference I FT By Financial Times