IT was, we were promised, the week when Labour politics would change.
Out would go the established, slick, top-down Blairite way of doing things and in would come a more authentic and principled bottom-up approach to opposition.
But, for all the Corbynite hype, what we got seemed not so much “new politics” but old politics in red socks and sandals.
Mr Corbyn began his media offensive by at last appearing on the Marr sofa, where, to many people’s surprise the left-winger handled himself rather well, successfully observing the first rule of leadership: don’t screw up.
To great surprise, the main focus of the conference, the Trident debate, never happened.
Officially, this was put down to that old bugbear: democracy; the brothers and sisters simply did not choose Trident as a subject for debate. But, unofficially, it was suggested the trade union barons, who support retaining Britain’s nuclear deterrent because of the thousands of jobs involved, did not want CND, including Mr Corbyn, to have their day at conference.
Interestingly, the leader has made the internal debate redundant after admitting he would never push the nuclear button; nullifying the notion of deterrence.
Without the Trident conference debate, John McDonnell, the new Shadow Chancellor, became the main early focus with his assertion of a “new economics” based on the rejection of George Osborne’s ideological obsession with austerity.
The books would be balanced, we were told. The deficit would be removed not through cuts but growth. Yet there were no details.
Scotland featured strongly in Mr McDonnell’s address with an appeal for SNP switchers to “come home” to Labour, which, despite the Nationalists’ rhetoric, was, he argued, the real deal when it came to anti-austerity.
The main theme of Mr Corbyn’s keynote address was to bring back majority British values of respect, decency, fairness and solidarity; the conference slogan was “straight-talking, honest politics”.
Intriguingly, the Labour leader emulated Mr O’Donnell by insisting that there was now a new energised force in British politics, the New Left, which was seeking to convince people that the neo-liberal economic consensus had simply had its day.
He received a rousing cheer when he said the days of the rich few telling the masses they had to “take what you’re given” were over, declaring: “They expect millions of people to work harder and longer for a lower quality of life on lower wages. Well, they’re not having it!”
The old way of doing politics was for the Left and the Right to move to the centre in their attempt to get elected; Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell seem to think that it is now time for the centre to move towards them.
It is often said that politics is the art of compromise. It will be interesting to see in the months ahead that, if Middle Britain does not swing towards Corbynomics, whether or not the leaders of the New Left have the ability to practise it.
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