On Tuesday, Keir Starmer delivered his speech to the Labour party conference, in which he warned against the ‘politics of grievance.’
Over the course of his address to the conference in Liverpool, the prime minister said the UK was at a political ‘fork in the road’, where “we can choose decency, or we can choose division. Renewal or decline.”
Unsurprisingly, a lot of attention was given to Reform and Nigel Farage, along with plenty of mentions of flags and fighting the “thuggery” and “racism” shown by some parts of the public in recent months.
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But perhaps one of the most telling parts of Starmer’s speech – and a sign of just how much the political landscape has shifted over the last year – was in what he didn’t say.
The Labour leader didn’t make a single mention of the Tory Party over an entire hour of speaking, and didn’t once mention their leader Kemi Badenoch.
It was only in the final minutes of Starmer’s speech that the Conservatives finally got a name check, when the prime minister asked the conference “do you remember them?”
He said: “I don’t know if they believed in grievance politics, and maybe they do now when you see them turning away from the rule of law.”
For decades, it would have been unimaginable for a Labour leader to make almost no mention of Conservatives in their big conference speech.
But maybe this is the biggest sign yet of how irrelevant the Tories have become following their general election wipeout.
Whilst much has been made this year of how far behind Reform Labour are in the polls, the Conservatives have consistently ranked third, and are even at risk of falling behind the Lib Dems and maybe even the Greens if recent polls are anything to go by.
And you can be sure that it won’t take Badenoch an hour to mention Keir Starmer or Labour when she speaks the Tory conference in Manchester next month.