Polly Toynbee: Corbyn’s uniting words on Brexit sealed the deal
Oh, Jeremy Corbyn, what a difference a year makes. The cult and its chanters sometimes render him a plaster saint, vacant emblem for any passing hope or dream. But here was a speech of solid sense, not airy aspiration. This united party are all Corbelievers now, and which lingering Labour doubters can pick a quarrel with any of this agenda? Believing he might really win has never been easier.
His learning curve has been meteoric, this speech authoritative and abundant with promises both necessary and popular. He needed no cheap shots to point to the economic incompetence and Brexit chaos of Theresa May’s mismanagement. As Tories abandon centrism, Corbyn’s claim to common sense convinces.
Here was all you would expect on social justice, public services, housing, rent controls, education, skills. But what resounded most – what seals the deal for Labour supporters – were his uniting words on Brexit. No more foot-dragging, but a strong pledge to the single market and customs union, and excoriating on the shocking treatment of EU citizens here. He’s right to claim only Labour has a chance of healing Britain’s crippling Brexit divide.
The Tories and their press will need to scrape their barrels of inventive mendacity for headlines to scarify voters that Corbynism means a Venezuelan-style coup. Yes, they can rattle the “magic money tree” – and Labour will need to explain its spending priorities in detail. But a charge of financial irresponsibility is hard to make stick after the government’s calamitous economic record.
What was missing? Enough acknowledgement of the electoral mountain still to climb – more than 60 seats to win. Still to be reached are cadres of older patriotic working classes, and the shire and suburb patio zones still terra incognita to Corbynism. Can he do that? The Tories may fix it for him, daily more unfit to govern, sinking in their own Brexit quicksand, with no better leader in sight. Corbyn placed Labour as the party best able to rescue the country from the growing morass – and certainly the party Europe’s frustrated negotiators could deal with best.
Matthew d’Ancona: Economically illiterate, but Corbyn’s Labour would win an election
Too long by far, rambling in places and woolly in others, Jeremy Corbyn’s conference speech had at its core a proposition of the greatest importance: namely, that the politics of democratic socialism represents the “new common sense”, “the new consensus” and “the political mainstream”.
As Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair demonstrated, the political centre of gravity isn’t fixed or unmovable. Corbyn was also correct that the challenges of 2017 are quite different to those of 20 or 30 years ago.
Labour’s unexpected success in the general election reflected the resonance of left populism in an age of anxiety – an age in which the pathologies of globalisation, the conundrum of automation and the digital revolution have conspired to make many voters feel desperately insecure.
When you are struggling to feed your family on a zero-hours contract, or fear that you may soon be replaced by a machine, or fret at night that your frozen pay is lagging further behind inflation, a dose of statism, public regulation and higher taxes for the rich probably sounds about right. Corbyn understands that policy has to be emotionally adhesive.
It also has to work, of course. To my centre-right ears, his solutions still sound economically illiterate, technically callow, and ideologically inflexible. Yet the most powerful force driving Corbynism towards office is not the strength of his blueprint but the fraying of the blue rosette.
For who needs friends when you have enemies like the Conservatives? The phrase “self-interested Brexit bungling” will echo in Manchester next week. So will Corbyn’s demand: “Pull yourself together or make way.” His own party may or may not be, in his own words, “government-ready”. The remarkable fact remains that, were an election held today, Labour would win it.
Ellie Mae O’Hagan: Confident, audacious and ready for power
Jeremy Corbyn’s speech last year was good, but the conference felt somewhat deflated. This year Corbyn was nothing short of incredible – his speech was confident and audacious, his delivery nearly flawless. He had the swagger one would expect from a man closing Labour’s most lively conference in years, and who had recently been at the centre of a grassroots movement that destabilised a hubristic government.
To sum up the speech in a sentence: “Tories, we’re coming for you.” Not only did Corbyn tear into the Tories’ record, he also insisted that a Labour government was inevitable. He talked about forging a “new common sense,” he issued messages to other world leaders. And it felt right. After two years of trials and tribulations in this new Labour party, perhaps what was most remarkable about this moment was just how natural it seemed.
It was already clear from the general election manifesto how willing this Labour party is to go against the received wisdom. That manifesto broke the shibboleths that say public ownership is unrealistic, or that free education is too costly. But this speech went even further. Corbyn castigated regeneration, he casually dispensed socialist aphorisms. He even sassed the Daily Mail’s Paul Dacre. But it didn’t feel controversial; it felt like a speech that was slotted perfectly into this peculiar political moment. In Corbyn’s words, “a new consensus is emerging”.
Victory for Labour is not certain, and the party undoubtedly still has a lot of work to do. But this speech revealed a Labour party, and a Labour leader, ready to take power. Things are really getting interesting.
Anne Perkins: If the heavy policy lifting isn’t done, that chant will become a joke
Savour this moment (Jeremy Corbyn certainly did, for more than an hour): a Labour leader pledging economic and political revolution, live on national television, cheered to the echo and ahead in the polls. If love conquers all, the next election is a done deal.
A unique set of circumstances has propelled Labour’s traditional left into this political stratosphere. The government is unpopular, incompetent and as catastrophically disunited as John Major’s after the economic collapse of 1992. By contrast, Labour is buoyant, cheerful and confident. Thousands of delegates enjoyed the late autumn sun, a mix of true believers, new believers and old lags looking as dazed as caged hens tasting freedom.
But any party leader can rally the troops. Corbyn is much, much better than he was – as he is at the entire leadership skillset – but the real question is whether he has got the world beyond Brighton into the mood.
Corbyn behaves as if the election is next week, so the party can concentrate on the big picture and merely sketch in the outline of policies. It won’t be like that next year, and even less so the year after that, let alone in 2022, when the election is due. Many of this week’s pledges on, say, a national education service or social housing or urban regeneration sound genuinely exciting. But there’s heavy lifting to be done to muscle them up for the hot light of real debate.
Most significantly, there has been an organised silence on the biggest question of all. Every big Brexit question – on single market access and customs union, freedom of movement and the balance between radical economics and EU rules – are where they were a week ago: to be decided.
Veterans of 1997 can still hum Things Can Only Get Better. Oh, Jeremy Corbyn could so easily be sung in jest.
Maurice Mcleod: Music to my ears, and perhaps his last speech in opposition
This was my first conference as a Labour member for 21 years. In 1996, Tony Blair talked about Labour “being for all the people rather than just for the few”. This wasn’t the only echo I heard in Brighton.
Both leaders talked about Labour being on the “threshold of power”; both claimed to be right person to lead Britain through the impending challenges. Jeremy Corbyn channelled the same revolutionary zeal but from a less polished, more believable place. Like a beloved rock star, he thrilled his audience with his greatest hits: scrapping tuition fees, building council homes and more funding for the NHS and public sector.
But the new album also spoke of empowering people and trusting them to make their own decisions. There was no centralised control, as advocated by Blair. Corbyn spoke about giving the public the power to challenge business, politicians and even developers.
Councils will have to ballot existing tenants and leaseholders before any redevelopment scheme can take place and those same tenants must get a home in the new site once it’s been redeveloped. This was music to this council tenant’s ears.
The standing ovations may have been reminiscent of scenes in Rocky IV, where the crowd were forced to stand and cheer at moments, but this was heartfelt. Most of the time, it felt like we were at a football match rather than a political conference. The biggest cheer of the day was for the much-abused and much-loved Diane Abbott, who was given two standing ovations and an impromptu chorus of Happy Birthday.
Corbyn spoke with the confidence of a man who had stared down two leadership elections, a coup attempt, a hostile national media and a strong and stable Tory government, and come up smelling of red roses. This wasn’t a speech about his enemies though, but one pregnant with promise. Blair’s speech in 1996 turned out to be his last in opposition. Corbyn’s speech could well be the same.
