Labour party

It is easy to inflate the importance of speeches made at party conferences. Particularly when those speeches are the last such set piece events before a general election. But they are still, in the end and at bottom, a distillation of what matters most to a leader. A guide to his priorities; a demonstration of his faith. Somewhere along the line David Cameron has lost that faith. He was elected leader of the Tory party in desperate times and became Prime Minister in dismal times. In both instances he triumphed, at least in part, because he persuaded his audience that though he might look like a traditional Tory he was in fact a rather different type of Tory from those voters had grown fond of despising. Once upon a time, you see, David Cameron had a story to tell.

The Conservative conference pub is back again this year, with its usual bitter jokes about Labour. Mr Steerpike had an exclusive peek at the posters they're using to poke fun at Ed Miliband's party. The pub this year is called the 'Tax & Spend'. Funnily enough, they've decided to remind the Labour leader of the deficit, just in case he's forgotten: Perhaps someone could set up a Campaign for Real Deficit Reduction.

By 524 votes to 43, the House of Commons has voted to support air-strikes against Islamic State in Iraq. The margin of victory is not surprising given how limited the motion was, it rules out ground troops and makes clear there’ll be another vote before any action in Syria. But in a sign of the unease of some on the Labour side, Rushanara Ali, who represents George Galloway’s old seat of Bethnal Green and Bow, has resigned from the front bench over Labour’s support for the motion. Indeed, the first estimates are that 24 Labour MPs voted against while just five Tories opposed. The question now is whether, and when, Cameron might return to the Commons to try and gain approval for action in Syria.

There are many reasons why Labour conference felt flat this year, and many of them are out of the party's control. It cannot help that its MPs and a number of its delegates are tired after an energetic Scottish campaign. It cannot help that the Scottish campaign saw a level of engagement in politics that cannot be replicated, save by another vote with a clear question and clear implications, and that would always have contrasted badly with the Labour conference. It cannot help that the referendum took place just days before the conference began, and that therefore it was impossible to get the same sort of coverage you'd expect in the run-up to your conference in the press.

No notes speech have been Ed Miliband’s political party trick. His One Nation speech two years ago ended speculation about his leadership and last year’s energy price freeze effort knocked the Tories off their stride for months. But today, the no notes speech hurt Miliband rather than helped him. Without an autocue, Miliband skipped bits of the speech. This has happened to him before, one year he missed out the section on the environment. But this year, Miliband missed out the bits he could least afford to: forgetting the sections on the deficit and immigration.

How does Labour win back the working class voters who've abandoned it? This question, part of the soul searching the party fell into when it lost the 2010 election, has gained even greater currency since the Scottish referendum. This evening Michael Dugher and John Denham had a stab at answering it at a conference fringe. And the answers were really quite unsettling. Denham told the fringe that 'we're talking to people who've come to the conclusion that governments are a bonus if they don't make their lives worse' and therefore just one policy wasn't going to solve it. He said: 'We have to get back into a relationship with people who have good reason to believe politics isn't working for them.

Judging by the reaction in the conference hall, Hilary Benn's speech was the best of this afternoon's session. Several people gave him a standing ovation. His task was rather easier than Ed Miliband's on Marr this morning, because the Shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary could talk about hopey-changey Labour ideas, rather than the nopey-changey Labour opposition to English votes for English laws (EVEL). So Benn focused on the devolution to English cities and regions that Labour has been working on and talking about for months, arguing that it was the true way to respond to the referendum result. He said: 'Our deal is for all parts of England. Conference, this will be the biggest economic decentralisation in a century. But it won't be enough.