Brexit: Corbyn’s line holds for now
Jeremy Corbyn didn’t sit in on most of the Brexit debate. Just in case.
His team had authorised an operation to stop any debate on a specific motion so the delegates didn’t trap him in a policy commitment on the single market in a mirror image of the traps he hopes to set for the Tories as Brexit legislation goes through parliament.
He needn’t have worried. Even when delegates clapped a speaker calling for a massive re-think on Brexit, it was as nothing to the applause for people who invoked the Leader’s name and queried the motives of pro-Europeans who were saying he should re-think his approach to Europe.
Watching the dynamics of the hall you sense his authority over the party (MPs and Councillors apart, of course) is such that his line will hold for now.
You see delegates clapping lines about the single market being essential for prosperity and then moments later stand clapping furiously when the Leader is praised.
This is also a foreign affairs section of the conference and the biggest ovation came when one delegate proclaimed that the party was not anti-Semitic.
Rounding up Emily Thornberry, in a very confident speech that will feed talk of her as a future leader, mocked Boris Johnson for not acknowledging paternity of the Vote Leave campaign and said his paternity payments should be £350m a year. Jeremy Corbyn clapped that laugh line in a rather reserved way.
Sir Keir Starmer, by contrast, hasn’t yet got the hang of pausing for laughter and applause lines and other tricks of the trade. He attacked the constructive ambiguity of the government on Brexit which took some nerve. There’s a lawyerly stiffness which can work in the Commons as MPs praise his mastery of the EU processes but which doesn’t yet travel to the podium.
Bristol West CLP brought an illuminated shrine of the leader to the conference hall. They’ve brought 19 constituency members to follow debates, a record.
They sit with other South-West constituency parties on the floor of conference along with a mighty London and South-East constituency representation.
Their numbers are striking as is their support for the leader and their position, within clear view of the conference chair compared with other delegations at the back of the hall. It’s meant that conference floor debate constituency delegate contributions that I’ve followed have been dominated by seats from below the Severn-Trent line.
As for the parliamentarians on the platform, they are dominated by a line north of the Thames and within the M25.