Reflections on the UK party conference season

At the end of the summer, IChemE’s Head of Policy & Impact Duncan Lugton attended both the Labour and Conservative Party conferences to network, engage with the government and opposition, raise the profile of the Institution, and get a feel for the political agenda up ahead. In this blog, he offers a few personal reflections on the UK party conference season.

The mood at the Labour conference was an interesting mix

There was a real sense of purpose and optimism among party members now that Labour is in power, but this was tempered by a clear sense of the difficult realities of being in government. The conference took place against the backdrop of ongoing press scrutiny over free gifts received by various ministers, and controversy surrounding the cutting of the winter fuel allowance.

The Labour conference was also humming with lobbying activity. This is what you’d expect with a new government, but I was still struck by how packed the agenda was, how thinly stretched ministers were across the various sessions, and how fringe meetings typically had queues out the door. The conference was a vivid illustration of the intense competition for government attention. 

Net zero and green energy were hot topics at the conferences

These areas cropped up all over the Labour conference, and the event strongly reaffirmed the party’s ambitions. Despite this clear agreement on the ambition, there was a strong sense that seismic efforts will be needed to deliver this in practice. At the Conservative party conference, I saw some soul-searching about what the party thinks and what it should stand for when it comes to net zero and green energy, with some quite passionate disagreements being aired at the sessions I attended. It will be interesting to see how the party’s views coalesce in this area, and what role they choose to play as an opposition party when it comes to these topics. 

Both the Labour and Conservative Party conferences left us waiting for more detail

Each of these conferences were held in the shadow of pending political decisions – the upcoming budget in the case of Labour, and the result of their leadership election in the case of the Conservatives. Budgets reflect and shape the government’s priorities, the relative importance of different agendas, projects and departments. With this still to be announced, the message I kept hearing at the Labour party conference was: ‘We won’t know exactly where things stand until after the Budget’.

Anyone like me who was eager to find out detail of the government’s plans on topics such as how the push to green energy or net zero will work in practice, or what we might see next on chemicals regulation, would have left the conference somewhat disappointed. There was a similar picture at the Conservative conference, with much of the real decision-making about the party’s future direction and policy platform being on hold until the election of their new leader.  

Following the election, there is a much larger third party in UK politics than we have seen in recent years

This year my conference season took me to Birmingham and Liverpool, but with the Lib Dems now having 72 MPs to the Conservatives’ 121, there’s an argument that it should have taken me to Brighton to visit their conference too. We will be thinking hard about our engagement next party conference season.

Final thoughts

With party conference season over, normal parliamentary activity resumes in earnest. At IChemE, the Policy Team are looking forward to the budget later this month, the various committees restarting their activity in earnest, and all those conversations across Westminster where we will continue to work to champion the voice of chemical engineering. 

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