Who are the winners and losers from the Conservative and Labour conferences?

Although everyone involved takes them so seriously, and every party conference is supposed to be “make or break”, they never get the billing “You can safely ignore this one, it’s ages before the election”, truly momentous conference “moments” are rare. Labour usually dishes up most of these because, apart from during the New Labour years, conference is supposed to be sovereign, and so various rows about Europe, nuclear weapons and how to elect the leader tend to grab the headlines.

Sometimes a party leader will coin a phrase or declare war on some faction or other, as when Hugh Gaitskell pledged to fight unilateral nuclear disarmament, and when Margaret Thatcher told her audience, “You turn if you want to... The lady’s not for turning.”

There were no such thrills this time around, and the leaders’ speeches were either dull and policy-driven (Starmer) or entertaining but content-free (Johnson); but that doesn’t mean the proceedings were entirely meaningless or devoid of interest. There were some notable winners and losers, and pointers to the future…

Winners

Angela Rayner. The “most improved” politician to have emerged from the past three sweaty, busy weeks is the deputy leader of the Labour Party. Eve-of-conference publicity in a glossy mag, complete with glam shots of the photogenic Rayner, got her off to an excellent start – and with little of the usual backlash from the more austere elements on the left. The story she told of her loveless upbringing and personal struggles was genuinely moving, and placed her apart from the run of politicians who’ve proceeded relatively smoothly from good schools to university to the professions. Her proposals for enhanced worker rights from day one went down predictably well, but there was much more to come. Whether it was late-night fatigue or a calculated move, Angela Rayner’s outburst against “scum” Tories was something of a triumph, at least for her personal ambitions. She’d used the word before, in the Commons, and been told off by the speaker. This time she was among friends, and took full advantage of it with a little crowd-pleasing “post-watershed” verbal attack on Boris Johnson. Her response to the media was smart – she’d apologise when Johnson apologised for saying homophobic and racist things. Keir Starmer said he’d have a word with her, but no apology has been forthcoming. Even when she went out for a fag break, she ended up on the front pages looking like a femme fatale. She is a power in her own right.

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Liz Truss. The ambitious Truss has reaped the rewards for her studious courting of the more fundamentalist activists, who value her flinty partisanship and her fierce, if insincere, loyalty to Boris Johnson, and admire the way she has turned her position as minister for women and equalities on its head, using it as a command centre for her “war on woke”. She was promoted to the Foreign Office in the reshuffle, and didn’t really need to do much at conference except be rude to the French and aggressive towards the Chinese, and she duly obliged. She knows what to do, and her fans know she will do it: “In Liz We Truss.” A scrap between her and Rayner, leading their respective parties in a general election, would be quite the spectacle.

Rachel Reeves. In her first conference speech, Reeves was the first shadow chancellor since Labour lost power in 2010 to unveil a policy that genuinely unnerved the Conservatives. Pledging to abolish business rates, rather than some wishy-washy reforms or a review, was bold and especially smart because business is becoming so disillusioned with the Conservatives. Of course abolition begs all manner of questions, not least how she’d fund the £36bn revenue shortfall, but no one doubts that business rates are utterly outdated in the age of digital commerce and are obscenely unfair on struggling high-street retailers. Overall, her speech was punchy, creative and intelligent, and surprisingly well delivered (she’s been a flat, uninspiring speaker in the past). She’s not Gordon Brown circa 1996 yet, but she is an asset to her party.

Women and girls. All parties have reacted to the horrific rape and murder of Sarah Everard with pledges to change the law and reform police attitudes and procedures, including Priti Patel’s independent inquiry into how and why Wayne Couzens was allowed to behave as he did.

Losers

The Labour left. Although Keir Starmer and his allies didn’t get all they wanted, they did secure just enough changes in the way the Labour Party runs itself to prevent any resurgence of Corbynism, including hostile leadership calls and campaigns to oust centrist Labour MPs. Key unions, and soft-left figures such as Rayner and Andy Burnham (who did well to remind his party that he still exists), went along with most of it. The rulebook changes went ahead with only one frontbench resignation. Starmer got away with it, and there’s just a hint that Labour is getting tired of losing.

Therese Coffey. The usually low-key secretary of state for work and pensions hasn’t had a great few weeks, what with her apparently not understanding how the social security system works. She tried to join in with the party atmosphere at the Tory conference, as did so many: however, her choice of karaoke track, “(I’ve Had)The Time of My Life”, was unfortunate, coinciding as it did with the cut of £20 a week for hard-pressed families on universal credit.

The Liberal Democrats. Ignored as ever by much of the media, Ed Davey and his team tried to make the best of their breakthrough in the Chesham and Amersham by-election earlier in the year. We were invited, once again, to believe that the “blue wall” of moderate, Europhile nimbyish Conservative-held seats in the comfortable south are about to tumble to the Lib Dems. However, Michael Gove and Johnson confirmed that the radical changes to planning rules had been shelved, and the Lib Dems’ appeal to anti-lockdown Tory voters is probably too late to matter (even if it was ever going to work). The Lib Dems seem stuck on single figures in the national polls, uncomfortably near the Greens.

Levelling up. Still no sign of what on earth it means, let alone witnessing its transformation from vacuous slogan to life-enhancing change in northern towns.