Labour Conference 2023

The Labour Party’s annual conference officially kicks off tomorrow morning and, as with all parliamentary candidates, I will be attending.

While each of the major political parties has an annual conference, there are big differences between them, not least with how big a role members play. On the one extreme there is the Conservative Party Conference, where debates have no impact upon the direction of the party and on the other there’s Lib Dem conference which acts as the supreme decision-making body of the party.

Labour Conference sits somewhere in the middle, providing a strong steer to the party’s leadership but ultimately not being able to bind their hands (while some like to claim that conference was reduced to a purely advisory role under Tony Blair, the reality is that conference has never been able to override the position of the party leadership). This means that the debates do matter, but they aren’t the ‘be all and end all’ of conference with much of the most interesting stuff taking place at fringe meetings.

With the party looking well-placed to enter government at the next General Election, this conference will certainly be an important one as the party seeks to add more detail to what it intends to deliver and with many organisations looking to influence the party’s direction.

I have a fair amount of experience of conference, having been to most conferences since I joined the party over two decades ago, so I plan on using the next few days to do some vlogs to help provide more detail on what conference is about and key events and decisions over the week. My hope is that I can open up what the event is like to those who have only ever seen brief clips of it on the news and to explain what the decisions being taken in Liverpool over the next few days really mean for our town.