Labour in Brighton: good gags but a gap on the economy

Labour conference delegates have started going home. At lunchtime, large crowds spilled from the conference centre onto the foggy esplanade. It seems many took the train.

This afternoon Ed Miliband introduced Doreen Lawrence, whose son Stephen was murdered in 1993 in a racist killing. She addressed those delegates who'd hung around, a strong and admirable woman who has suffered terrible loss. She reminded conference of the particular challenges faced by her own community—Afro-Caribbean unemployment stands at 50 per cent, she said. She then recounted her shock at receiving the phone call in which she learned that Miliband wanted to put her into the Lords as a Labour peer. Since the announcement, she said, "I've had a lot of people bowing." Though Lawrence's speech occasionally veered towards Labour orthodoxy, it was nevertheless deeply affecting and the audience applauded generously.

Before taking questions from the floor, Miliband stood up and made a few comments. He said he was disappointed that David Cameron was trying to evade the question of televised debates before the next general election. Miliband seemed happy that Cameron appeared to be running scared, as did the audience. But he should be wary of getting ahead of himself. The election is another 20 months away after all. It's a bit early to be ribbing the PM about the minutiae of the election campaign.

Then came the questions, a useful insight into what the party at large is thinking. The head of Southwark Council asked what Miliband would do to build more houses, and a prospective parliamentary candidate from Kent asked what he planned to do about rail fares. There were questions about sport, strengthening the unions, whether there would be a "Burnham plan" for the NHS and whether the term "working people" was unduly exclusive. Miliband's answers seemed to satisfy the crowd. And he appeared at ease and confident. It was all a long way from his 2011 conference speech in which he'd spoken about the need for a "something for something," society, a phrase that sounded for all the world as if he had left two blanks that he planned to fill in later. The members lapped it up.

They loved it too when he recounted a meeting he'd had during the conference with 107-year-old Hettie Bower, who had been present at the Battle of Cable Street, when East Enders stood up to Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts. And the lesson he drew from this? That the "forces of progress can triumph—that is the lesson of history". And with that, Miliband's conference was over.

As delegates filed out they were handed copies of the words to William Blake's "Jerusalem", a poem of which, according to Damian McBride's new book, Gordon Browen was particularly fond.

Then came Harriet Harman, who started by announcing proudly that Labour had delivered a "One Nation fiscal stimulus for the bars here in Brighton"—the crowd liked the gag. Then she turned on that recent apostate from Ukip, Godfrey Bloom, whom she described as "so unreconstructed he makes Jeremy Clarkson look like a Fabian." It's a good line and there were several in Miliband's speech yesterday as well—who's writing them? The Tories will need some gags of their own next week if they're not to come across as the scowling, austere antidote to Labour.

The most significant thing about this conference wasn't so much what was said as what wasn't said. Today, the economy went unmentioned. Around 30 party members asked questions in this afternoon's colloquy with the leader, but none of them raised the subject of the national debt, the deficit or how the private sector was meant to propel Britain back into the economic safety zone. Miliband didn't go near these topics in any of his answers. Nor did Harman, when summing up the events of the last few days.

This kind of evasiveness is OK when dealing with the party faithful, but if Miliband is to persuade voters, as opposed to activists, that he has what it takes to be Prime Minister then he must develop an effective riposte to the Conservative line that Labour "broke the economy—we fixed it." For all that has been said in Brighton this year, it appears that he has not yet done so.