USUALLY, starting any article with a question mark is a bad idea; readers already have questions, what they are hoping for is some answers. But the Labour Party conference in Liverpool was so confused and contradictory, at least in terms of the stance of the leadership, that it requires careful analysis before any conclusions can be drawn.

Those confusions applied to almost every area of policy. This included Palestine, welfare, on workers’ rights, on racism and on economic policy. Taken together, the interpretation must be that the current leadership wants to face two ways at once, but is committed to moving in the same disastrous direction.

Under pressure from members and especially from some of the unions, the current leadership offered some breadcrumbs back towards a trail marked traditional Labour values. But the real direction of travel remains towards the politics of our opponents, reactionary politics which are antithetical to those Labour values.

The issue of Palestine was foremost, not just because of the carnage taking place. A slew of motions on the topic was ruled out of order, in the worst anti-democratic traditions of the conference.

Even so, a coalition of unions, Palestine activists led by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a minority in the CLPs was able to force a motion onto the agenda around the new development of the UN designating Israel’s actions as genocide.

Conference endorsed that verdict and voted down the leadership’s motion which watered it down.

The leadership’s actions were indicative of its whole approach. Despite opposing the successful motion, and rubbishing it afterwards, it should be noted its own wishy-washy motion went further in criticising Israel than any minister has. This followed on the government decision to recognise a state of Palestine. Both of these are clearly a response to pressure.

Even so, the true position remains as before. Not only was the pro-Palestinian motion opposed, but the government also backs Donald Trump’s plan for an imperial takeover of Gaza, and ministers have said or done nothing to defend the aid flotilla that attempted to get to Gaza, even on the illegal arrest of British citizens. Their fundamentally pro-Israel position has not altered.

This set the pattern for the conference, albeit with fewer successes for the forces opposed to the government’s agenda of war, racism and austerity. On the latter there were fine words on economic growth being the antidote to division, and there was even a very small amount for improving social care, which meant that Wes Streeting, the party apparatus’s favoured PM-in-waiting was the sole minister who got to announce any new policy of any substance. There were even broad and repeated hints that the two-child benefit cap will be scrapped.

But the leadership is setting itself up for a ferocious battle on this issue if it disappoints or pushes the removal of the cap until after the next election, when it is unlikely to be in a position to implement it. It also cuts against the grain of the substance of economic policy, which was hardened by Keir Starmer himself in his threat to cut welfare from young people with mental illnesses.

There was also a strong determination that there will be no change to Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules, which is the distorted prism through which the debate in the party is taking place over tax-and-spend policy.

There was the further threat that young people who refused specific job offers would have their benefits cut, despite the obvious problem that the number of unemployed in this country vastly exceeds the number of available vacancies. As I recall, one prominent colleague said when David Cameron and George Osborne began austerity 15 years ago, “what is their grudge against young people?”

The issue of racism featured prominently throughout the conference, if not in the conference hall itself. Like Nigel Farage, this Labour leadership does not confine itself to outlawing asylum-seekers, as they claim. They also specifically target all migrants.

That is the content of the restrictions on the granting of indefinite leave to remain (ILR), which is aimed at people who have migrated here for work and been granted more than one work visa over a period of years.

When the Home Secretary says that they also need to be paying in National Insurance throughout that period, she seems either completely misinformed or is deliberately misleading the public to sound tough. No-one here on a work visa can claim benefits. Under the current rules that can only take place after ILR has been granted.

As for denying the right to family reunion, both the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister are lawyers, although their attachment to human rights does seem a little flimsy, to say the least.

The right to a family life is enshrined in a series of international laws and treaties, including both the European Convention and UN Declaration of Human Rights.

In fact, the Prime Minister has told reporters he wants to rethink the European Convention, presumably in the hope of transforming a universal right into a selective privilege. From Boris Johnson onwards, successive government policies have been to bring in as many workers as possible, deny them all rights and demonise them in the process.

This is seen as a device to create an unlimited supply of labour without rights and so lowering the pay and rights of all workers.

All of this is topped off by the minister for communities(!) backtracking from any definition of Islamophobia, as if they intend to deny its existence altogether when it is one of the lead attacks of the far right.

Bizarrely, ministers also managed to themselves in knots over whether Reform UK is racist. When any individual or party blames all of society’s ills on migrants and then extends that to all black and Asian people, they clearly are racist.

The reason for their confusion is that they do not take racism seriously, yet they know that both current and defecting Labour voters understand that Reform UK is racist. The mess is caused by wanting to attack Farage but fear of the term racism. Not surprising when the Home Secretary appears to take her orders from Farage, implementing his every pronouncement.

Apparently, he is a racist for wanting to remove people who have been here for decades and granted ILR. But Labour’s policy is to remove people who have worked here for decades who should be granted ILR.

The plaudits for the conference are likely to be short-lived. Because the Labour leadership wants to look two ways at once, it has appeared both confused and confusing. The party cannot gain support from that, and without a genuine change of direction, unfortunately its electoral prospects continue to look bleak.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington