Just when it was starting to look like the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool might slip by without any of the drama, protest, thinly veiled leadership challenges, badly timed mass public infrastructure project cancellations, and ‘is this comedy or tragedy?’ moments of last week’s Conservative meet up in Manchester, a protester showed up with handfuls of glitter to brighten things up this afternoon.
The protester took to the stage as Labour leader Keir Starmer was about to begin his big speech to conference and showered the leader in glitter while shouting “True democracy is citizen led. Politics needs an update. We demand a people’s house. We are in crisis.”
The protester was then dragged from the hall continuing to scream “we are in crisis,” which may be a fair point, although it wasn’t entirely clear what he was advocating doing about it beyond throwing glitter. Merseyside Police later confirmed that a 28-year-old man had been arrested “on suspicion of S39 assault, breach of the peace and causing public nuisance.”
Starmer continued his speech after removing his glitter-covered jacket and, as the BBC’s commentator neatly quipped in light of the tone of the conference so far, “rolling up his sleeves” and getting on with it.
Starmer continued, relatively unruffled, to deliver a speech promising to fix at least some of the current crisis points his uninvited guest might have been referring to.
His key points included using a combination of funding from scrapping non-dom tax status and AI to improve the NHS; end bonuses for “people pumping sewage into rivers”; treat key workers with respect; smash the “class ceiling”; build new homes including a wave of “new towns,” harking back to the post-war building programme of Clement Attlee; defending the union with Scotland; condemning Hamas and declaring solidarity with Israel, and inviting disillusioned Tories to join Labour.
That usage of AI may be of particular interest to readers in the tech sphere, but there wasn’t a deal of detail beyond that it should be use to spot illnesses. A laudable enough ambition, much like the rest, but of course this is a conference speech designed to whip up the converted, not a meticulously costed plan to give politics an “update.”
