It’s party time for resurgent Labour

Activists stream in for ‘biggest’ conference

Jeremy Corbyn leader of the Labour Party LABOUR activists are gathered in Brighton for what might be their biggest annual conference ever.

The party has issued 13,500 passes.

And more members are due to turn up than at any Labour conference in the past 10 years.

There are 7,700 members attending in various guises, whether as visitors or delegates.

Labour has a spring in its step and it’s easy to understand why.

An Ipsos MORI poll put them ahead of the Tories, with 44% of voters apparently saying they would vote Labour in an election, compared to 40% backing the Tories.

It follows June’s general election when Labour gained 30 seats and Theresa May’s Conservatives lost their majority.

Of course, Labour lost that election. And if anyone could be described as winning it, it was the Tories.

But it’s Labour that seems to be gaining popularity.

Party leader Jeremy Corbyn got it right when he said in an interview: “The election has changed politics in this country. We are now the mainstream.” But there’s a catch. The Labour Party itself has always been mainstream. Mr Corbyn seems to have been referring to the left-wing, unashamedly socialist politics that he believes in.

Labour’s civil wars of the 1980s ended with the defeat of left-wingers such as Mr Corbyn’s political hero, Tony Benn. The left (or hard left as some people call them) became a fringe tendency within the party, tolerated and patronised by MPs from other traditions.

Not any more. The left are the masters now.

And what’s changed since the election is that just about everyone in the Labour Party now accepts that.

Whether they’re happy about it or not, Labour MPs of all descriptions accept that Mr Corbyn has earned the right to lead them, and to pursue his type of politics.

That means standing on a left-wing manifesto with plans to nationalise the railways, push up the minimum wage, give public sector workers a pay rise - and increase taxes for larger businesses and some better off people.

It will be the next election, more than the last one, that reveals whether the public will vote for these policies. Because Labour now looks like a potential government that could actually carry them out.

Theresa May’s divided administration looks more fragile by the day. Labour must be ready.