Lobby: Labour conference – back to their roots

With or without the blessing of MPs, Labour’s leadership is once more championing socialism. Mathew Beech reports from Labour’s conference.

Behind Jeremy’s joy in victory, Smith’s sorrow in defeat and the debates of divisions and the need for unity within the party, the Labour conference stuck firmly to the socialist ideals of its re-elected leader.

The annual conference in Liverpool saw the party continue down the path it set out on last year, although the atmosphere was flat and subdued in the wake of the bruising leadership battle.

Interventionism was unashamedly front and centre of the policies put forward by the current Labour shadow cabinet – many of whom can expect a new job title in the imminent reshuffle Corbyn has planned.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell led the line. In his keynote speech he said: “The winds of globalisation are blowing in a different direction. They are blowing against the belief in the free market and in favour of intervention.”

This was backed up by Labour’s new energy policy – which goes above and beyond the democratisation idea put forward last year.

There is the plan to help create 200 local energy companies and 1,000 co-operatives to take on and help break the dominance of the major energy companies, but the interventionism goes further than creating competitors.

In a bid to ensure these new competitors have an environment in which they can compete, Labour plans to enforce new regulations. It wants to force suppliers to call the standard variable tariff a penalty tariff and make them put customers who have been on it for more than 18 months on to their cheapest deal, as well as inform them of the best deal on the entire market.

The water market has also been warned, with the party talking about breaking up the vertically integrated companies – as well as in the energy sector – claiming this will ensure customers get a better deal because trading will become fairer and more transparent.

A policy to ban fracking was unveiled the day before the first shipment of US fracked gas arrived in the UK – although this remains a contentious issue within the party.

Internal frictions are still raw and waiting to heal, and the concussion from the Smith-Corbyn battle dampened the atmosphere this year. But what is clear is that Labour is leaning to the left once more and if it gains power in 2020 – or before if a snap election is called – it plans to shake up the markets in which utilities and businesses in general operate.

From the floor – Tom Grimwood

Everyone at the Labour party ­conference was singing from the same hymnsheet, and that prayer was Unity…

Following an EU referendum that divided the UK and a leadership contest that split the party, unity was the name of the game at this year’s Labour conference.

There were few speeches in which it didn’t get a mention, and former shadow energy secretary Lisa Nandy urged activists to find common ground not only other members of the party, but with allies across the left.

There was also plenty of talk about winning back the droves of traditional Labour voters who broke with the party in the EU referendum and voted out – those who supposedly felt left behind and detached from decision-making in Westminster and Brussels.

Many speakers identified greater devolution as the solution; not just the transfer of power from Westminster to town halls but to the people themselves. It was this grassroots approach which characterised Corbyn’s energy manifesto, launched earlier this month. It vowed to help create more than 200 local energy companies and 1,000 community energy co-operatives.

Fittingly, Nottingham councillor Steve Battlemuch called for councils to create their own energy companies by whitelabelling its offering, Robin Hood Energy: “Councils can come to Nottingham and link up with us, and make your own energy companies by using our energy and calling it what you like.”