The 2024 Labour Party Conference was, in some ways, the jubilant conference that you would expect for a party fresh from winning 404 MPs with a working majority of 167. Indeed, the sheer volume of people at this Conference (20,000+; the largest number in Labour’s history) is a testament to that success, albeit many of them were sporting commercial passes.

However, the meeting rooms and corridors of the Liverpool Conference Centre were also stalked by an air of uncertainty.  ‘What now?’ was the question on many delegates (and more than a few MPs) lips.

This is a question which had some easy answers, especially in areas explicitly covered by the Labour manifesto.  In others, the answers were less certain.  The campaign trail seems to have a long tail.  For all the talk of being a “mission-led Government”, there is still some lingering uncertainty about what that mission might be.

This is, in many ways, partly due to the unusual timing of the election.  Had it taken place in its usual May slot, the new Government would have been well bedded in by now with Ministers on top of their briefs.  However, the reality is that, with the intervention of the truncated summer recess, many of the usual elements of a Government are still yet to be put in place.

At the time of writing, key civil service posts remain unfilled, select committee members remain unallocated, and most APPGs have yet to be re-established. Meanwhile, the Government media operations are floundering in the face of two competing scandals (freebies and cronies), neither of which it seems able to kill.

The one saving grace for Labour since it took office is that the main opposition Conservative Party is still tied up in introspection as it embarks on an unnecessarily epic leadership contest and is singularly failing in its one key remit of holding the Government to account.

What was perhaps unexpected for Starmer’s Labour Party was the lack of polish that those of us with long memories remember from New Labour.  Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell were, and remain, unrivalled political communicators. They had a firmness of touch which ensured that they were unbuffeted by events.

This government however has beset by a donor scandal which continues to escalate.  Worse still, is the open infighting in the civil service where the unusual spectre of special advisers and civil servants briefing against a new government must be especially debilitating.

Starmer’s keynote speech, his first as Prime Minister, was unremarkable and lacklustre, largely devoid of meaningful content and riddled with soundbites and non-sequiturs. His ‘sausages’ slip, while a big diplomatic faux pas, easily outshone the remainder of his oration, which in some ways actually worked to his advantage.  As the biographies are written, they will forever be known for this error, as there was precious little else to distinguish it.

This wasn’t what many were expecting from the highly anticipated new Labour Government.  It seemed to many commentators that the “grown-ups” were back in charge after the chaos of the Brexit and COVID years.

However, the UK is not in a docile or benevolent political era.  Post pandemic and post Brexit there is much for government to turn its attention to.

The Budget looms in October, and in Spring 2025, we have a spending review to look forward to as well.  We will then see if that starts to provide the government with the sense of direction and mission that it clearly seeks and if the policy gaps that were still in evidence at the conference in Liverpool are starting to be filled in.