Post-Covid party for Labour after kami-Kwasi cock-up

TWO headlines, barely 72 hours apart: “End of Covid in sight” and “Covid cases rising again”. Surely, they can’t both be right. You can’t be up and down at the same time.

But it seems you can. The good news is the Omicron variant has run out of steam and humans may finally be getting ahead in this race. The bad news is that infections have risen again, to almost a million cases, with northern and West Midlands regions hardest hit. Here in Liverpool, it seems that delegates to the Labour Party conference take their cue from the cheery headline.

Very few wear a mask. The conference hall, hotels, the crowded fringe and the bars look like a recruiting centre for Laurence Fox’s nutty brigade. The optimistic view is certainly shared by Labour’s top brass.

In his welcome to delegates, Keir Starmer says: “The brilliance of our scientists, NHS and key workers has beaten back the Covid-19 virus.” Job done.

So, don’t mention the C-word, despite the obvious risk of infection from so many people breathing copious amounts of hot air in each other’s faces. Can you blame them? They have been deprived of this arcane political pleasure for three years, and nobody is going to take it away now. Not when Labour is romping ahead in the polls and the Tory government’s reputation for economic reliability lies in ruins after Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s kamikaze mini-Budget.

Fun by the Mersey ends today, and delegates go home with a spring in their step. The high point was last night’s Daily Mirror party. That was it, my 50th Labour conference over. I’ve a feeling it may be over and out. I can’t hack it like I used to.