![]() She adapted Ronald Reagan’s classic 1980 challenge declaring voters should ask themselves “Do you and your family feel better off than you did thirteen years ago?” (When David Cameron became Prime Minister). Her proposal of “a Covid corruption commissioner” underlines the fecklessness with which she believes the Conservative government has behaved and the “iron discipline” she intends to impose on spending. Her doctrine was “securonomics”, assuring “working people” that Labour can be trusted to look after their money. She made no significant new announcements. Rachel Reeves presented herself as Britain’s first female Chancellor of the Exchequer, backed up by a brief video endorsement from former Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney. They had already decided that there would be no dramatic fresh announcements to disturb the serenity of their current lead in the polls. They increasingly look upon themselves as the next government – with an appropriate sense of priorities. The outbreak of war in the Middle East will divert media attention from Labour’s conference. This year there was applause for Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy declaring “Labour utterly condemns Hamas’ appalling attack on Israel…Labour stands firmly in support of Israel’s right to defend itself”. The black, red, green and white Palestinian flag was everywhere at the Corbyn-era conference in Liverpool. No one heckled Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey as he spelt out full commitment to NATO and Ukraine and pledged “Britain will be better defended with Labour”. If proof was needed of how much has changed since Kinnock battled against unilateral disarmament it came in the annual debate on “Britain in the World”. ![]() She has held the seat ever since and is convinced the militant left is finished despite its second bloom during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. In 1992 Eagle was elected MP for Wallasey. So, she reminisced, was Angela Eagle with her father, making up a lonely pair of cheerers in the Wallasey delegation. “You start with far-fetched resolutions…”, he bellowed at the 1985 party conference, “ …you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council, a Labour council, hiring taxis to scuttle round the city handing out redundancy notices to its own members.” I was there in Bournemouth, shouldered out of the way by Liverpool Walton MP and NEC member Eric Heffer as he stormed out in protest. The excesses of Liverpool Council inspired GBH, another Bleasdale TV drama, and prompted then Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s celebrated “Taxi Speech” denunciation, and subsequent purge, of Militant Tendency members. Relations on the left were not always so amicable. It is business as usual in Liverpool as Labour attendees mingle unremarked upon with those out for the day in Albert Dock and Liverpool One. Last week’s fraying Conservative occupation of central Manchester felt like the end days of the Romans in Britain. The Conservatives have yet to make a booking here. Liverpool is a Labour city all the same, which explains why the Labour party has made a deal to bring its conference here for five years running. “We were facing the wrong way” as trade with Europe grew. The Mersey was too shallow to accommodate container-carrying ships at its docks. His characters blame accidents of fate which led to Liverpool’s decline instead. Bleasdale has even voiced respect for her minister Michael Heseltine who brought the regenerative garden festival to Liverpool. She is not a butt for vilification, in contrast to the kicking she gets in Billy Elliot, set in the North East a few years later. Bleasdale’s original Play For Today was screened in 1978 before Thatcher’s watershed 1979 election victory. Forty years on it feels more elegiac for a lost way of life than partisan political. It was broadcast when there were two million unemployed and de-industrialisation was gathering pace. The original Blackstuff was seen as a riposte to early Thatcherism. ![]() The mostly late middle-aged audience packing the full house was primed for the catchphrases which Graham has kept in such as “Give us a job” and the confession box exchange: Priest: “I’m Dan.” Yosser Hughes: “I’m desperate, Dan”. The story of men on the dole has iconic status on Merseyside.
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