What a glittering party… but now the Keir-sized hangover

After the giddy heights of Starmer’s magnificent – as in magnificently dull… – speech, Labour faces a sobering question, writes John Rentoul: where are all the actual policies to pay for all those promises?

Keir Starmer’s sole new announcement was his plan to ‘bulldoze’ the planning system (AFP/Getty)

Labour’s hugely successful conference has closed in Liverpool. During it, I met one furious thirty-something delegate who complained that “you young people are getting giddy, because you can smell it”, meaning the spoils of election victory – and another, only slightly older, who detected an alarming note of “complacency and hubris”.

At the heart of the successful conference was a magnificent leader’s speech. Magnificently dull, that is.

There was absolutely nothing in it apart from some vaguely uplifting waffle – which was just what this moment in history called for.