What a difference a week makes. From the almost unbridled joy of a Liberal Democrat Conference where we celebrated a huge infusion of new MPs and a sense that, after more than a decade of pain and struggle to be seen as relevant, we’re bystanders at a Labour Conference where, rather than celebrated a glorious victory, there’s a sense of defensiveness already.
Caron has already covered the rather bizarre mess that Keir Starmer has gotten into over the £100,000 worth of gifts that he has received and declared in recent years. And I entirely understand that there is a perceived political advantage to getting the bad news out of the way early – most keen observers of the last year of the Sunak administration will have already concluded that the sheer scale of unfunded commitments they made would make the task of an incoming administration a difficult one.
But instead of one hundred days of action, it all gives an impression of a leadership rather spinning their wheels even if they are, in reality, possibly doing quite a lot. The media won’t help that – their unfriendliness towards a Labour government can be taken as read. We’ll see if they can do something about changing the narrative over the next couple of days…