The Labour party is planning to cut short their party conference if Scotland votes Yes, according to leaks to Huffington Post.
The conference is due to run in Manchester from this Sunday through to next Wednesday, but they are assuming that Parliament would be recalled on Monday if Yes wins. In that event, it seems all ministerial speeches and fringe meetings will be cancelled, “with the exception of the keynote address from Labour leader Ed Miliband next Tuesday” . That does not leave much, and delegates who are not MPs will be left to create their own entertainment in Manchester.
“No one thought about it,” said a senior Labour frontbencher, when asked by HuffPost UK why the party leadership hadn’t anticipated the party political fallout from a Yes vote in the Scottish referendum and, in particular, the implications for the annual conference season.
Maybe Liberal Democrats should be pleased that the party had the foresight to move our conference, which was originally planned for last weekend, to October. But maybe not, because HuffPo suggests that we may have to cancel ours as well if there is urgent business going on in Westminster at the time.
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10 Comments
I believe the thinking is that there might be a vote of confidence called and all MPs and support need to be able to rush to parliament quickly in the event.
All academic since Yes seems unlikely.
Yes it was a very strange Huff Post article. Amazing that no-one at Labour thought about what might happen if there was a Yes (if indeed this is all true) but I don’t see why this should affect us.
Left to their own entertainment? They could have a film night and a disco.
How can WE hold a national conference in Glasgow if it has voted to leave the UK?
Manchester is less than 2 hours by train from London. They’ll make it work if they have to.
Having said that, as someone on the fence in the indyref, less Labour conference might just tip me into the Yes camp…
@theakes
‘How can WE hold a national conference in Glasgow if it has voted to leave the UK?’
Of course we can. All Alex Salmond’s campaigning has been on the basis that secession from the UK will be orderly and by negotiation, so the event of a Yes vote, the UK will continue in its present form for some time, certainly beyond the next UK General Election and perhaps beyond the next Scottish parliamentary election.
Of course, the other extreme scenario, of barricades on the Border on Saturday, would be a clincher for the No campaign.
There is plenty in Manchester to keep them busy if they don’t hold their conference here.
They could visit our excellent Town Hall, built by our Liberal Forefathers to signifiy the greatness of the City. They could visit our Transport Museum and learn how despite Labour’s claims that the only way to get the Tram extended was to introduce a congestion charge, the Lib Dems in Government managed to secure the funding without such a charge. They could visit our hospitals and learn about the fact that NHS funding in the city has gone up (not down by 20% as they proposed) or they could visit some of our local schools and see how the pupil premium is really helping local children from some of the poorest households in the country get a decent start in life.
They could visit some of our local businesses offering apprenticehips to thousands of young mancestrians, or the new business zone at the airport offering thousands of new jobs. They could take a ride on our vastly improved trams system or visit Victoria Rail Station to see some of the improvement works in progress, and to get an idea of how the long awaited Picc-Vic line this Government is funding will impact on cross-city rail links.
They could visit our medical school, or our Graphine centre or our univeristy business park and see some of the cutting edge research and development this Government is funding to ensure that our industries lead the world as we come out of recession. Or they could vist some of the heat-sink sites that this government has funded, bringing cheap energy to thousands of local homes.
There is a lot for Labour delegates to see in Manchester, driven by the Liberal Democrats in Government, innovative and new and totally nothing to do with the last Labour Government which felt that it could ignore this city because it’s vote was guaranteed.
We have held Conferences before while Parliament has been recalled; unlike the others , ours actually takes decisions, so it won’t be cancelled.
Not cancelled, but how can it be held in Glasgow, it looks ridiculous.
@Iain Donaldson
“They could visit our Transport Museum and learn how despite Labour’s claims that the only way to get the Tram extended was to introduce a congestion charge, the Lib Dems in Government managed to secure the funding without such a charge.”
That isn’t true at all. The extensions you refer to (to Ashton, East Didsbury, and the airport) were all planned before the coalition came to power, and all government funding for them was agreed by March 2010 – when we still had a Labour government. The Lib Dems had nothing to do with it whatsoever.
The only part of the network the coalition has made any contribution to is the yet-unbuilt 0.8 mile second city crossing, which was only proposed in 2011.
Many of the other things on your list are largely thanks to Manchester council, the university, and other local organisations. Manchester is indeed a very forward-thinking city these days – despite/because of (delete according to preference) the fact that 95 of the city’s 96 councillors are Labour.