By Kevin Maguire

Copyright newstatesman

Battles between Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham and the two who many view as their proxies in the party’s deputy leadership contest, Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell, give Labour’s Liverpool conference the edge of a soap opera or beauty contest. The King of the North’s undeclared challenge to the Prime Minister means many eyes will be on Burnham. Behind the scenes, I hear, cabinet ministers are under intensifying pressure from Downing Street to back Phillipson. Ed Miliband and Lisa Nandy, the soft left’s two surviving cabinet champions, defied Starmer to endorse Powell. Rachel Reeves’s Spads, I hear, quietly lobbied metro mayors – excluding Burnham, obvs – to rah-rah Phillipson. Surely there’s no hint of future extra funding for mayors on the loyalty team?

Dull pointy-head Darren Jones, Starmer’s No 10 enforcer – said to think he’s so bright that every night he files his head with a pencil sharpener – is heralded as one of Labour’s greatest communicators by TV political producer extraordinaire Rob Burley. His evidence? The BBC former political boss and author of the acclaimed book Why Is This Lying Bastard Lying to Me? recalled on the podcast Politics Inside Out how, on live telly, the then-backbench MP didn’t know the answer to a question. He then messaged a press officer, and repeated their reply on air. Let’s hope he tries that as a cabinet minister.

Is migrant-bashing, hard-right wannabe PM Nigel Farage on a health kick? Residents of Thorpe-le-Soken, a sleepy village in the Reform UK leader’s Clacton constituency, keep bumping into him at the four-star Lifehouse Spa & Hotel in the area. Treatments include a £79, 50-minute “body polish”, which might even be able to scrape a few of the barnacles from Farage’s well-used hide. Diners in the Lifehouse’s restaurant have been surprised by the Trump mini-me’s choice of lunch: salad. They’ve been less surprised by what he washes it down with: a pint.

It’s been a rough few weeks for current and former Labour Party spin doctors. The Mandelson sacking and resignations of Angela Rayner and Paul Ovenden have all troubled Starmer’s press secretary, Sophie Nazemi. On a train home from her torrid week at work, Nazemi could reportedly be heard on the phone to Corbyn aide turned Your Party strategy aficionado James Schneider. Theirs is one of the most intriguing matches in Westminster; Nazemi also once worked for Corbyn. The married couple now straddle both sides of the fallout of Jezza’s expulsion from the party. The subject of the phone call? Their dinner plans. Nazemi was overheard on public transport asking Schneider to buy her a meal deal for supper. How romantic.

Lib Dem MPs who bothered to spend any time at the party’s seaside conference grumbled about control freakery and a lack of bite from the leadership. Even early day motions, parliament’s equivalent of graffiti, must be approved centrally before tabling. And embarrassing dad Ed Davey’s strategic decision to whisper in the hope of appealing to a decent majority is grating in an age of rage with those shouting loudest grabbing most attention. The Lib jamboree wasn’t appealing to all voters. Also booked into the Bournemouth Highcliff Marriott Hotel hosting the top brass was a hen party. One tiara-clad woman in baby pink sash was bemused by motion-clutching politicos thronging the bar. “Who are these weirdos?” she wondered aloud. Canvassers best put her down as a “don’t know”.

It’s a toss-up whether Starmer and Labour or Zack Polanski and the Greens are most relieved at the Life of Brian implosion-before-marriage of Your Party. The union of Corbyn’s People’s Front and the People’s Front of Zarah Sultana looks unlikely to ever be anything other than a shotgun wedding should they actually wed. Lib Dems recall the days Polanski was one of them, before he metamorphosed into an eco-populist Nigel Farage, sharing footage of the reborn red-green warrior on a conference stage celebrating “five years in government to make us proud” after the numbing austerity ConDem coalition. Polanski’s disgruntled former colleagues also noted his first email as leader highlighted the cost of living, childcare, public ownership of water and taking on Reform and not the environment or climate change. On balance, it may be Polanski who breathed the loudest sigh of relief.

Labour’s outgunned ranks in the Lords were thinned further over the summer with the death of Alan Howarth, a Tory Minister who switched to Labour at the birth of the Tony Blair era. No cloth cap and clogs for genial Baron Howarth, who’d answer the door of his home in striped PJs and a velvet smoking jacket. Howarth also supported fox hunting, yet his dislike of the politicisation of the (blood) sport was matched by hostility for an anti-Labour tally-ho brigade plotting to repeal its ban in England and Wales. During the 2017 election, Howarth played an unheralded role in helping unseat Theresa May’s campaign, slipping to Labour hounds a secret plan by hunts to target rural MPs. The early row unsettled May who was forced to distance herself from the pink-coated hunters before she was thrown off her horse by the social care fiasco.

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