Liverpool wakes, and the corridor conversations begin
The city unfurls itself slowly beneath a damp, silver sky — red-brick terraces glistening, seagulls wheeling above the waterfront, and the distant hum of Scouse voices threading through the air. Delegates and journalists, draped in lanyards and rainproofs, spill out of hotels and down to the cavernous conference halls. Steam rises from paper cups of tea; someone jokes about the Beatles having to do their best thinking on terraces just like this. It feels, for a moment, quintessentially Liverpool: warm, noisy, impatient for change.
And yet, beneath the familiar local color, there’s a sharper current running through the Labour Party conference this year — an urgency more brittle than optimism. Keir Starmer, sitting at the head of a party that once promised a new kind of steady stewardship, is being nudged and pinched from every side. Outside, a rising tide of discontent has fuelled opinion polls placing Reform UK in an unexpectedly competitive position. Inside, the chatter is about strategy, discipline and whether the party’s compass is pointing straight.
Identity cards and heated questions about migration
Starmer has staked a bold claim ahead of the conference: a plan for mandatory identification cards, framed as a blunt instrument to curb irregular migration. In the corridors and on the fringes, opinions are falling into two camps almost as fast as the autumn rain. For some, it is a pragmatic attempt to regain political ground on an issue voters name as decisive. For others, it is a dangerous surrender to the politics of fear.
“You either trust the state to register everyone fairly, or you end up giving it tools that can be misused,” said Aisha Khan, a legal aid solicitor who volunteers with migrant support groups. “We’re already seeing people afraid to access services; this would magnify that in a country with racialised policing and hostile immigration systems.”
From the government benches, the pitch is simple: migration is a salient concern for many voters, and tangible action will be judged. From civil-society kitchens and church halls, the reply is equally simple and urgent: civil liberties and the dignity of vulnerable people must not be collateral damage.
To anchor the debate in reality, consider the scale: irregular migration across small-boat routes and other channels has climbed markedly since the mid-2010s, prompting successive governments to strike at policy levers and borders. Tens of thousands of people have made perilous crossings in recent years, and the public appetite for “solutions” has become raw and immediate. Whether ID cards would work, and at what cost, remains fiercely contested.
Voices from the ground
“It might look decisive on a front page, but on the street it looks like more checkpoints for people already living in fear,” said Tom Richards, a lifelong Labour voter from Toxteth, who sat in on the early plenary. “We want secure borders, sure. But not at the expense of our values.”
An academic who studies migration policy, speaking at a fringe panel, put it more clinically: “ID systems in other democracies have often increased administrative control without necessarily reducing clandestine movements. The real question is: are we solving the problem or merely treating a symptom for electoral advantage?”
Irish politics moves centre-stage at a British conference
Running alongside these domestic fights is an unmistakable Irish thread woven through this year’s Liverpool gathering. Sinn Féin, long an uncomfortable presence for British unionists and a rising force in Irish politics, has chosen the conference as a platform for two messages: a sharp critique of the ID proposal and a renewed push on the prospect of a border poll in Ireland.
Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Féin leader, is slated to speak at a fringe event this evening. Organisers say she will describe the proposed ID measure as ill-conceived and likely to inflame communities rather than protect them. “This isn’t merely a technical policy,” one Sinn Féin aide told me. “It speaks to how we imagine belonging in a country that shares so much history, cross-border movement, and family ties.”
McDonald is also expected to press both the British and Irish governments to prepare for the possibility of a referendum on Irish unity before the decade’s end, arguing that demographic shifts and political momentum make planning necessary. The British government, down the corridor and in statements from Westminster, has pushed back — indicating a border poll is not currently a priority.
What a border poll would mean
For many in Liverpool’s Irish community — a network of pubs, memorial halls, choirs and charity groups that have helped shape the city’s soul — the talk of referenda is both historical and personal. “Our families crossed the sea for work and safety,” said Deirdre O’Connell, who runs a community centre in the city’s north. “We’ll listen to any democratic process, of course. But it must be fair, legal, and ready to answer the practical questions people will have.”
The urgency in McDonald’s rhetoric taps into wider debates about identity, migration, and sovereignty — questions reverberating across Europe as regionalism and populism reshape political maps.
Philomena’s Law: compassion, reckoning and the long shadow of history
Then there is another, quieter campaign threading through the conference: a call from Labour MPs and campaigners for the UK to adopt what supporters are calling “Philomena’s Law.” Named in honour of Philomena Lee, a survivor of Ireland’s mother-and-baby homes, the bill aims to guarantee survivors living in the UK can access compensation without seeing their welfare benefits docked.
It is an issue that is at once intimate and institutional — the collision of personal testimony with state accounting. Survivors and their advocates describe decades of secrecy, shame and bureaucratic neglect. “You can’t repair what was broken with paperwork alone,” said Siobhán McSweeney, the actor and campaigner due to speak in support of the bill. “But the state can at least stop punishing survivors twice.”
For Liverpool’s Irish diaspora — many with relatives who endured those homes or knew someone who did — the campaign is not abstract. It recalls late-night conversations over tea and bread, stories passed down as warnings, and the delicate calculus of justice decades late.
Politics as a mirror: what the conference reveals
What, then, does this conference reflect about Britain today? It is a country simultaneously hungry for order and anxious about the instruments offered to achieve it. It is a polity where migration, identity, and historical reckoning jostle for primacy, and where parties try to balance conviction with electoral calculation.
“Parties are in the business of persuading, but they must also be in the business of imagining,” said Dr. Eleanor Park, a political analyst. “Policies like ID cards test that balance. Are you persuading by offering a future that people want to live in, or are you merely pandering to fears?”
As the conference unfolds, delegates will vote on motions, network over hurried lunches, and listen to speeches that seek to steady a ship that creaks in places. Starmer’s attempt to reassert control feels less like a single speech than a season of small maneuvers: policy tweaks, public-facing moments, and, crucially, the quiet work of holding a sprawling coalition together.
Questions for the reader
So what do you think? When does security become surveillance? When does principled governance become political expediency? And how do communities — migrant, indigenous, diasporic — find a place in a polity wrestling with these questions?
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Will mandatory ID cards calm public fears or create new injustices?
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Can cross-border issues like an Irish referendum be handled without inflaming old wounds?
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Will moral reckonings — like compensation for survivors — find a place in the ledger of modern politics?
These are not merely policy choices; they are choices about what kind of society Britain will be. And in a humid conference hall in Liverpool, surrounded by slogans and sandwiches, the debate about that future is very much alive.
Listen closely. There are stories being told here that will be told again, in different towns, by different people — and the answers we choose will echo far beyond this city’s docks.
