Labour party

The Shadow Chancellor’s speech at Labour conference has always been the second biggest slot after the leader. But in a sense John McDonnell’s speech today, just before lunch, is the most important slot of the whole conference because he is talking about the policy area that did the most to put voters off Labour in May. A review by Jon Cruddas found that voters were well-aware of Labour’s anti-austerity message, and that they didn’t like it, even though all the retail offers on energy bills and so on were popular. But McDonnell believes that voters need to be told of the dangers of austerity, which they haven’t, and then they will come over to his way of thinking.

Every morning throughout party conference season, we’ll be providing our pick of the fringe events on Coffee House. Labour conference kicks a up notch today, with big speeches due from Alan Johnson, Hilary Benn and John McDonnell. But as ever, much of the excitement can be found at the fringe events - with ministers, moderates, future leadership contenders, Corbynites and even the leader himself making appearances in stuffy Brighton hotels. Here is our pick of Monday's events.

As Labour conference kicked off on Sunday on Brighton pier, it was a case of the ghosts of Labour's past at the annual New Statesman party. The magazine's editor Jason Cowley told attendees who had their journeys affected by train works not to worry as 'Corbyn has a plan for the railways', before reflecting on what had happened to the party in the space of a year.  'At our party last year in Manchester Ed Miliband was standing beside me and I introduced him as our next Prime Minister,' he told partygoers at Brighton's Al Fresco restaurant. While Miliband stayed away this time, the party's new leader was also notably absent.

Britain’s policy towards China appears to be quite simple: doing exactly what China wants. On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Jonathan Mirsky and Fraser Nelson discuss this week’s Spectator cover feature on George Osborne’s visit to China and our interview with the Dalai Lama. Why is the Chancellor so keen to please the Chinese government? Is David Cameron wrong to say he will never meet with the Dalai Lama again? And what does the Dalai Lama think of the Prime Minister’s position? Rod Liddle and James Delingpole also debate whether they have bad music tastes, following revelation that Delingpole enjoyed listening to Supertramp with the Prime Minister at university. Do all right-wingers inherently have bad music taste?

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreatbritishkowtow/media.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Stephen Bush discuss the upcoming Labour party conference" startat=1650] Listen [/audioplayer]Five years ago this Saturday, Ed Miliband was crowned Labour leader. Three days later, he had to deliver his first conference speech in that role. It was a distinctly underwhelming address. Miliband was overshadowed by his brother, who ticked Harriet Harman off for clapping. To try to give its new leader a better start this time round, Labour decided to announce the result of its leadership contest a fortnight before the party conference. But two weeks has been nowhere near enough time for Labour to come to terms with what has happened.

On religion, Jeremy Corbyn is interestingly moderate, circumspect — not the angry atheist you might expect. In a recent interview with the Christian magazine Third Way, he said his upbringing was quite religious: his mother was a ‘Bible-reading agnostic’ and his father a believer, and he went to a Christian school. ‘At what point did you decide that it wasn’t for you?’ he was asked. He replied very carefully, even challenging the premise of the question: ‘I’m not anti-religious at all. Not at all… I find religion very interesting. I find the power of faith very interesting. I have friends who are very strongly atheist and wouldn’t have anything to do with any faith, but I take a much more relaxed view of it.