Apart from a bright spark of hope in the victory of the Gaza motion, this year’s conference lacked vision and purpose — we need to urgently reconnect Labour with its roots rather than weakly aping the flag-waving right, argues KIM JOHNSON MP
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Arses and toothpaste
One of the only well-delivered cracks this week at conference came from a right-wing MP Conor McGinn — but it didn't leave me smiling, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
In the face of funding cuts, closures and a shift into women’s centres providing criminal justice-only services rather than a holistic approach, RUTH HUNT urges women to protect existing resources, volunteer and build new networks of support
The CPB's congress aims to build the united front against monopoly capitalism, utilising the YCL’s promising new generation of militants — but our party remains far from the strength history requires of it, despite recent progress, writes JOHNNIE HUNTER
From Palestine, to racism, to fiscal rules and migrant rights, DIANE ABBOTT surveys some of the main themes of Labour conference this week
We must remember how the CPGB led anti-fascist movement defeated Mosley’s BUF in September 1936 and apply the lessons of mass mobilisation and open, unapologetic confrontation to the rise of the far right today, writes DYLAN MURPHY
On the anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, DAVID ROSENBERG reflects on his encounters with those who were there that day in 1936 – and suggests two urgent tasks for the anti-fascists of today
KEIR STARMER’S jokes at Labour conference were a bit cringe. Some at the conference were better at delivering a line, but I was left scratching my head at the wit and wisdom of right-wing MP Conor McGinn, who is Labour’s deputy national campaign co-ordinator.
McGinn told the rally of Labour First, the right-wing Labour group he supports, that his “uncle was an Irish Labour Party councillor in Newry” who ran a store in a rural community. Towards the end of the 1960s McGinn’s uncle was approached by a salesman, a “sharp-suited young man” who was “extolling the virtues” of a “new-fangled concept called toothpaste.”
McGinn’s uncle took the salesman into the storeroom at the back of the shop and asked: “What do you see here?” The storeroom was piled high with unsold toilet rolls.
McGinn’s uncle told the salesman: “Son, they don’t clean their arses round here, they are hardly going to clean their teeth.”
McGinn said the moral of the story is to “know what we’re selling and know the people we are selling to” and “understand what they care about.” Charitably, McGinn was using a crude, if well-delivered, joke to get over a point.
But I couldn’t help think that the joker and his audience laughing about working people seeing toothpaste as a too-fancy luxury have a pretty bleak view of the electorate.
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