Exit Tory strategy, stage right

Unwisely, Rishi Sunak abandoned the centre ground in Manchester, making it easier for Keir Starmer to colonise it in Liverpool. Andrew Grice weighs up the winners and losers of the conference season

The two contrasting conferences showed that, even when covered in glitter, Labour outshines the Conservatives (AFP/Getty, EPA)

Not everything at Labour’s well-choreographed conference went according to plan. The main announcement Keir Starmer had long planned – of a new generation of new towns to enable a Labour government to build 1.5 million new homes in five years – was the subject of an unauthorised leak to The Times in August.

I’m told that the irritation of Team Starmer contributed to Starmer’s decision to demote Lisa Nandy from her post as shadow housing secretary in his reshuffle nine days later. There were also other reasons: he wanted to move Angela Rayner to the post. Nandy allies were bemused by what they saw as the unjustified relegation of one of Labour’s best communicators to the role of non-shadow international development secretary (there is no such Whitehall department to shadow). Despite the leak, Starmer stuck to his plan to make his conference pledge to rebuild Britain in a “decade of renewal”.