Labour Party Conference 2025: Reform or Renew?

3/10/2025

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Celia Clark

Off the back of a series of political missteps, senior resignations and party disunity, this was an important conference for Starmer and his Cabinet to get right. They were acutely aware of the need to defend the government’s record, set out a clearer direction of travel, and demonstrate its ability to face down Reform, all while managing threats to his leadership from within – not least from Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham. A complex set of challenges after just one year of being in government.

This year’s conference was a more muted affair than the previous two, with attendance noticeably down. In the year since the optimistic conference of 2024, the government has had to come to terms with the sobering reality of what it is to govern, a task made particularly challenging in the context of the current fiscal situation in the UK.

It was against that backdrop that the Prime Minister delivered his keynote speech on Tuesday afternoon. As ever, the speech was light on policy detail. In the absence of policy, we had Starmer’s most muscular attack yet on Reform. This was the central theme of the speech, with voters told they face a stark choice between “renewal or decline”. In a departure from the New Labour years, the PM said that he will take decisions on immigration which may be uncomfortable for his party but which are essential to his vision of social justice. In direct response to Reform’s new policy on Indefinite Leave to Remain, Starmer made a rallying cry to the conference hall to wave their flags in support of Labour as the party of true patriotism.

The language used by the PM has evolved. There was far less talk of the policy “missions”; in their place was an emotional analysis of the social injustices that stand in the way of a renewed Britain where working people get out what they put in. This was the closest we’d come to “Starmerism”, the strongest sense of what drives the PM. Had this been better articulated at the start of this government, the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) may have been more patient.

The deputy leadership race was more of a subplot in Liverpool. This is a proxy war between Number 10 and its preferred candidate, Bridget Phillipson, and the growing voices of dissent from across the PLP, trade unions and disgruntled party membership who are more likely to support Lucy Powell. The process concludes on 25th October when the results are announced from the vote of ordinary members. Latest polling suggests that there are a significant number of undecideds, but if members do voice their discontent as expected, Powell is surely the favourite.

Away from conference, chatter around a potential breach of the manifesto at the Autumn Budget to plug the fiscal gap continues to dominate headlines. And with key Cabinet ministers briefing the media immediately after conference that May’s local elections will be another moment of reckoning for the PM, the relief his team has felt this week looks likely to be short-lived.