Admitting to idealism – and political idealism in particular – can be embarrassing. Especially now. Following the coverage of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign and its aftermath, it is clear to me that cynicism is the language of our times. It doesn’t do to express too much hope, especially when you’re young. Veteran columnists await you, their keyboard-tapping fingers sharpened, ready to undermine any feelings of optimism that you may have about the “new politics”. Corbyn is unelectable, they say. His followers are narcissists, fringe hard leftists, abusive Twitter knobheads, lentil-eating Islingtonites. And that’s just the criticism from the left.

I don’t want to come across as a Corbyn hipster (“I liked him before he was cool”) but I voted for him in the general election. I live in the socialist republic of Islington North, where he has a reputation for principled and hard-working dedication to his constituents. Take the events of 18 September. Boris Johnson claimed that Corbyn had failed to “scrum down for England” by missing the Rugby World Cup opening ceremony. That day, the new Labour leader was with someone with far less power. As his constituent Daisy Barber recounted on Facebook, he was busy meeting her sister-in-law and her children at a surgery to talk about their housing situation.

As that story shows, the cliché of Isling­ton as a champagne socialist enclave is wrong. It is a diverse borough with some of the highest levels of deprivation in the country, especially so in Islington North. If Corbyn engages those who are suffering under austerity in his backyard, why wouldn’t he have the potential to do this elsewhere in the country? Anyone who has attended one of his rallies knows that he appeals not just to the tribal left but also to those who have never expressed an interest in politics before. Something exciting is happening, yet precious few are writing about the policies that have inspired this moment.

It is true that Corbyn’s potential electability is a concern, as is the lack of women in the top shadow cabinet positions. There are other areas where his detractors have made salient criticisms. I’m not a blindly optimistic “Corbynista”, incapable of hearing criticism of the dear leader; nor are any of my peers. I was expecting toxic political attacks, too. I was less prepared for the establishment’s cluelessness about why this movement is happening and how it is less about the man than about the values that he represents – fairness, equality, peace – and the hope that he inspires for a younger generation. The tone-deafness was striking. “Wow,” I thought. “They really, really don’t get it.”

From the evidence of the rallies and meetings that I have attended, Corbyn’s supporters come from a wide range of age groups and backgrounds. His popularity with young people, achieved without particularly trying to be anyone other than himself, is particularly noteworthy. He has built a grass-roots movement. As the journalist Ed Vulliamy wrote in the Observer, Corbyn’s victory in the leadership election “was the first time many of our young readers felt anything like relevance to, let alone empowerment within, a political system that has alienated them utterly”.

Yet the cold-water consensus elsewhere in the Sunday paper had let those readers down. Britain’s young people, so starkly disadvantaged in comparison to their elders, deserve better from the media.

The other lesson of recent weeks (as if we didn’t know already) is that you should never look to Twitter – that cynical, nuance-free home of hacks and trolls – to gauge the public mood. Instead, seek out the opinions of those who have little concern for burnishing a public reputation and whose hope and optimism are unspun. In this country, there are tens of thousands of people who have a question mark over their housing situation, or their care provision, or the care of someone they love. (These are not minority concerns, alien to Middle England’s comfortable prosperity. While housing is a huge millennial concern, a social care crisis awaits the baby boomers.)

My generation’s political opinions are often excluded from the mainstream media, which is why I wrote, early on in the campaign, for the New Statesman website about Corbyn’s young supporters. I sensed that a gulf was opening between the media establishment and my interviewees. On a personal level, I have never felt as though I belonged less in this industry because of my politics and my background than I do now. On a professional level, I have largely shut up about Corbyn. The mainstream media have an amazing ability to make your big dreams seem stupid and poorly informed.

Right now, the last thing that young people need is for newspapers to adopt braying tones of avuncular chastisement. They are the readers of the future, yet few print outlets engage with them. Instead, the young express themselves by going on marches and on Facebook, where they describe their relief that the devastating impact of austerity will finally be challenged with passion and conviction. Online, they share their hopes for a more egalitarian future and their dismay at the overwhelming tide of shit ­being thrown Corbyn’s way. Unlike the occasionally humourless “cybernats”, most young people in this country don’t want unwaveringly favourable, uncritical reporting and they love a bit of satire. They just want to be given the time of day.

Jeremy Corbyn has given many of my generation hope for a better future and he could do the same thing for many more disadvantaged and disenfranchised young voters. Will the establishment allow us that hope? Or at least some engagement with the policies and ideals inspiring that hope? If not, where do we go instead?

“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” Rarely has the hypocrisy surrounding abortion been captured as succinctly as in Florynce Kennedy’s 1971 quote. In an easily tweetable 57 characters Kennedy captures the arbitrariness of the relationship between sex, power and reproduction, identifying gender - as opposed to biology, religion or foetal viability - as the reason why women cannot access terminations. The problem, we see, is not what pregnancy is, but where women are situated within a social, cultural and economic hierarchy. It’s a quote that still has resonance today, or rather, it would have, were it not for the fact that its basic premise has been proven false. Men can get pregnant; abortion, on the other hand, remains as stigmatised as ever.

Just how many men do bear children is not especially clear. Last November it was reported that 54 Australian men had given birth over the past year. The US citizen Thomas Beattie was the first legally registered man to bear a child in 2007, while in 2012 Pink News reported on the first UK male to give birth. Writing in the Huffington Post, Trevor MacDonald suggest that “trans, genderqueer and intersex people have been giving birth for as long as women-identified people have.” Certainly, the pregnant body pays no heed to how an individual self-defines.

One might ask where this leaves a feminist analysis of the power relations governing reproductive choice. “Reduced to a bit of a fudge” would be the most honest answer. We know that reproduction is a feminist issue; we’re just no longer sure how, at least not if it has nothing to do with a class defined by assumed reproductive potential. So we’re left with a situation in which most of the things feminists write and say about reproduction would be classed as cissexist, yet if you pushed them on this issue, most would claim to support a more gender-neutral approach. But gender neutrality comes at a cost to the rhetorical punch achieved by quotes such as Kennedy’s. It shifts the focus away from gender as a means by which female bodies are controlled and problematises bodies themselves. Hence one witnesses an uneasy hovering between different linguistic options, between the desire to be all-encompassing and the need to say what one really means.

Occasionally this tension comes to a head. For instance, last year the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) changed some of the language in its core competencies document to refer to “pregnant people” as opposed to “women” (although there is still one reference to the latter). In August this year an organisation calling themselves Woman-Centred Midwifery delivered an Open Letter to MANA in protest at the changes, arguing that they constituted “the erasure of women from the language of birth”. The signatories include Ina May Gaskin, one of the most well-known advocates for natural birthing choices. Her involvement has shocked and disappointed many, to the extent that some have petitioned for her to be removed from the Birth and Beyond Conference speakers’ list. After all, why should language that is more neutral be seen as politically objectionable? If the object is to make the terms more inclusive, surely they still cover the people they included before?

It is very easy to dismiss Women-Centred Midwifery as the bad guys in all this. First of all, they’ve called themselves “woman-centred”. Nobody calls themselves “woman-centred” unless they’re a 1970s throwback, belonging to an age when feminism was drab, unenlightened and too busy eating its own afterbirth to get anything done. Kicking up a fuss over words such as “people” seems, on the face of it, just plain mean. Surely we can leave the wimmin-only tactics where they belong: with Millie Tant on the pages of Viz. After all, who wants to be the kind of person who talks about “the life-giving power of female biology” with a straight face?

And yet I think there is a problem with neutral language and it’s one which we desperately need to address. Ever since feminists declared, contra Freud, that biology is not destiny, we’ve been getting ourselves in a terrible mess over what we actually mean. If sex is a construct and the measure of a woman is not whether she has the desire and/or capacity to give birth, what does our reproductive potential, so often used against us, signify in relation to our experience of oppression?

For many of us, posing this question at all has been overwhelming. “Biology,” writes Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, “came to be viewed by women as a field sown with mines, best avoided altogether.” Or, as Adrienne Rich put it, “the body has been made so problematic for women that it has often seemed easier to shrug it off and travel as a disembodied spirit”. Except one cannot really do this when discussing conception, pregnancy and birth. Here, the difference between bodies starts to matter. Moreover, it’s a difference that is crucial to how gender operates. We cannot simply overlook it and hope for the best.

Sex might be a construct – I sincerely doubt that anyone thinks people with wombs have the word “FEMALE” imprinted in their bones, like in a stick of rock – but it is one that has emerged from the identification of reproductive difference (both real and potential). To quote the philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards, “as a matter of logic, before you can justify a group’s activities by reference to its general characteristics, you first need a justification for its acting as a single group at all, rather than (say) joining with a larger group, splitting into smaller ones, or having everyone act as individuals.” Man and woman exist, not as essentially gendered flesh, but as linguistic entities and political categories arising from an observed, if imprecisely defined, distinction. Of course, distinctions can change, but in this case any change has been minimal; we still know that some people are likely to be able to get pregnant and some people aren’t. Whatever we call them, whether or not we can always tell who they are by looking, we still have a sense of who “those people” are and where to situate them in a gender hierarchy.

If one looks at how gender functions, not as a means of self-definition, but as a class system, the gender-neutral pregnancy starts to feel akin to John Major’s “classless society”. It’s a way of using language to create the illusion of dismantling a hierarchy when what you really end up doing is ignoring it. Pregnancy is a gendered experience, not because pregnant individuals necessarily feel like women, but because the pregnant body is externally managed within the context of its subordinate sex class status. Because if it had a different status, “abortion [and free birthing choices, epidurals and caesareans on demand, investment into more and better pregnancy care etc.] would be a sacrament.” We need a way of talking about this which is permitted to prioritise the sex-class reading of gender over the identity-based one, not as way of excluding people, but as a way of naming what happens to them and others in the context of class-based oppression.

In Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?, Katrine Marçal describes our tendency to discuss humanity as though it were “created outside class, gender, race, age, background and experience – rather than through class, gender, race, age, background and experience”:

“Instead we see circumstances, the body and context as layers that have to be peeled away. They cloud the vision. If we want to talk about how things really are, we must abstract how things really are, we think.

But being human is experienced precisely through a gender, a body, a social position, and the backgrounds and experiences we have. There is no other way.”

The pregnant body is not an isolated, solipsistically self-defining object. It exists in time, within a specific social, historical and political context. One can argue over whether or not gender exists as an apolitical entity; whether to be a woman is to identify or be identified as one. Our most immediate challenge, however, concerns whether all pregnant individuals are seen as people, not whether all pregnant people are seen as women. In order to address this we need to talk about women as a class. Gender-neutral terms limit our ability to do this. Whatever our intentions, neutralising language is not a neutral act.

In his speech to Labour party conference, Jeremy Corbyn challenged David Cameron to intervene in the Saudi Arabian regime's human rights abuses.

He was referring specifically to the case of a 17-year-old, Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who faces execution for his involvement in a pro-democracy protest. Having been accused of illegal demonstration and fire arms offences, he has been given a death sentence of beheading and crucifixation.

Corbyn called the British government out on its cooperation with Saudi Arabia, urging it to end its plans to sell its expertise to Saudi Arabia for its prison service.

He said:

"Intervene now personally with the Saudi Arabian regime to stop the beheading and crucifixion of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who is threatened with the death penalty for taking part in a demonstration at the age of 17.

"While you're about it, terminate that bid made by our Ministry of Justice to provide prison services for Saudi Arabia which would be required to carry out the sentence that would be put down on Ali Mohammed al-Nimr.

"We have to be very clear what we stand for in human rights, because a refusal to stand up is the kind of thing that really damages Britain's standing in the world."

Jack of Kent, a blogger on legal matters, gives the details of the government's potential contract to provide the Saudis its expertise. He writes: 

"It is a revolting notion that the UK should be assisting any part of the Saudi punishment system to be more efficient.

"The Saudi regime is, without any exaggeration, barbaric. Criminal offences are not defined; there is no recognisable due process for defendants; and the punishments are savage. And this description is not just some hyperbole of a breathless human rights lawyer: it is what the UK embassy in Riyadh itself says in its chilling Information Pack for British Prisoners in Saudi Arabia."

Will the Prime Minister respond to the new Labour leader's call for him to stand up to Saudi Arabia?

“This pudding,” Winston Churchill is said to have remarked, “lacks a theme.” And so it was with Jeremy Corbyn’s first speech as Labour leader.

There were some good policy nuggets: more social housing, extending workplace securities like maternity and paternity pay to the self-employed, and his message to lay off personal attacks – levelled at his supporters and opponents – was a reminder of Corbyn’s class.

But what was the headline? And more importantly, what was the clip? Remember, the next election won’t be decided in the pages of the New Statesman. It’ll be the five-second clips between bits of music on the radio, the pictures on Sky News that play in Wetherspoon’s, and the soundbite on the evening news. With the exception of the final line about not "taking what's given", this speech lacked anything that will make those five second clips.

It may be that the attacks on the media and commentariat are the biggest headline from the speech. Journalists are even more disliked than politicians, so that's not, in theory, all bad news for Corbyn. But it's not the media that Corbyn has to defeat in 2020, it's the Conservatives. And if attacking the media is the headline – not the assault on child tax credits, surely the Tories' glass jaw – and is what's remembered, that will be a missed opportunity.

Compare and contrast today’s speech with yesterday’s by John McDonnell. Yes, McDonnell’s speech was miles off “the centre ground”. But it had a strong message, confidently delivered, and was hammered home through the use of affecting personal anecdotes and the deployment of Labour's new all-star-team of academics.

This speech, however, felt more like a shopping list: there were worthy causes aplenty, but it lacked a soundbite or a strong narrative. Next year will have to be a lot better – or in 2020, Labour will do a lot worse.

The early extracts of Jeremy Corbyn's first conference speech suggested a banal address lay ahead. Declarations of his "love" for Britain and the need for a "kinder" politics implied that Corbyn, like shadow chancellor John McDonnell, would be deliberately dull. The full text, however, was anything but. Emboldened by his mandate, Corbyn strayed repeatedly into divisive territory.

He advocated nuclear disarmament (in defiance of the opposition of his shadow cabinet), lambasted the "media commentariat" (despite allies advising him to end such criticisms) and declared that conference, not MPs, should have the ultimate say over policy ("our party as a whole will decide"). This was the speech that Corbyn wanted to give. There was no mention of the deficit (a deliberate choice, rather than an error) or of immigration, other than in the context of the refugee crisis. The many MPs who believe that Labour will only be electable once it has achieved credibility on both issues will have despaired at that.

Other than a smart pledge to extend maternity, paternity and sick pay to the self-employed (though it would come with a price attached), there were few forays into surprising political territory. Corbyn stuck to the well-trodden ground of rail renationalisation, housing (seemingly repeating the same passage), welfare cuts and human rights (vital though all are). The electorally defining issues of health and education were relegated to the margins. Corbyn's condemnation of welfare cuts and homelessness, turing the Tories' language of "security" against them, was powerful and sincere. But, like late-era Ed Miliband, he had much to say about the top and the bottom of society and too little to say about the middle.

The speech itself had little discernible structure, veering from issue to issue. There was no clear theme and few memorable lines. After an opening suite of well-crafted jokes, humour was dispensed with. It was, inevitably, well received in the hall. But almost too well. As he spoke, Corbyn often appeared to be addressing the activists at Brighton, rather than the voters at home. In an ill-chosen analogy, he derided those who declared that Labour was finished by arguing that no one would dismiss a football club that had attracted as many new supporters as the party had members (160,000 since May). Yet as fans know well, it is not the number of supporters in the stands that determines the results on the pitch. Corbyn cited his election as proof that "socialist and social democratic" parties were not in inexorable decline. But Labour will need to win a general election before it can credibly assert as much. Too often, Corbyn appeared more interested in the task of building a formidable protest movement than in becoming prime minister.

He ended with a fine and moving tribute to "the last bearded man to lead the Labour Party"– Keir Hardie. "We owe him and so many more so much," he declared. But it felt like ultimate proof that this was a speech for the activists, not the voters. The task that many MPs set for Corbyn before his speech was to bridge the gap between himself and the latter. But to most, it will feel wider than ever today. 

Friends, thank you so much for that incredible welcome and Rohit, thank you so much for that incredible welcome. Rohit, thank you so much for the way you introduced me and the way our family and you have contributed so much to our community. That was absolutely brilliant. Thank you very much.

I am truly delighted to be invited to make this speech today, because for the past two weeks, as you’ve probably known I’ve had a very easy, relaxing time. Hardly anything of any importance at all has happened to me.

You might have noticed in some of our newspapers they’ve taken a bit of an interest in me lately.

Some of the things I’ve read are this. According to one headline “Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the prospect of an asteroid ‘wiping out’ humanity.” 

Now, asteroids are pretty controversial. It’s not the kind of policy I’d want this party to adopt without a full debate in conference. So can we have the debate later in the week!

Another newspaper went even further and printed a ‘mini-novel’ that predicted how life would look if I were Prime Minister. It’s pretty scary I have to tell you.

It tells us football’s Premier League would collapse, which makes sense, because it’s quite difficult to see how all our brilliant top 20 teams in the Premiership would cope with playing after an asteroid had wiped out humanity. So that’s a no-no for sure!

And then the Daily Express informed readers that – I’m not quite sure how many greats there are here, but I think there are three or four - great-great-great grandfather, who I’d never heard of before was a very unpleasant sort of chap who apparently was involved in running a workhouse. I want to take this opportunity to apologise for not doing the decent thing and going back in time to have a chat with him about his appalling behaviour.

But then there’s another journalist who had obviously been hanging around my street a great deal, who quotes: “Neighbours often see him riding a Chairman Mao style bicycle.” Less thorough journalists might just have referred to it as just a ‘bicycle’, but no.

So we have to conclude that whenever we see someone on a bicycle from now on, there goes another supporter of Chairman Mao. Thus, the Daily Express has changed history.

But seriously Conference it’s a huge honour and a privilege for me to speak to you today as Leader of the Labour Party. 

To welcome all our new members. 

More than 160,000 have joined the Labour party.

And more than 50,000 have joined since the declaration of the leadership and deputy leadership election results. 

I’m very proud to say that in my own constituency, our membership as of last night had just gone over 3,000 individual members and 2,000 registered supporters. 5,000 people in my constituency.

I want to say first of all thank you to all of the people of my constituency of Islington North and Islington North Labour party for their friendship, support and all the activities we’ve done and all the help and support they’ve given me in the past few weeks. I’m truly grateful to you. Thank you very much indeed to everyone in Islington. 

Above I want to welcome all our new members to this party, everyone who’s joined this party in this great endeavour. To change our party, change our country, change our politics and change the way we do things. Above all I want to speak to everyone in Britain about the tasks Labour has now turned to. 

Opposing and fighting the Tory government and the huge damage it is doing. 

Developing Labour’s alternative. 

Renewing our policies so we can reach out across the country and win. 

Starting next year. 

In Wales.

In Scotland.

In London.

In Bristol. 

In local government elections across Britain.

I want to repeat the thanks I gave after my election to all the people who have served the Labour Party so well in recent months and years. 

To Ed Miliband for the leadership he gave our party, and for the courage and dignity he showed in the face of tawdry media attacks.

And also for the contribution I know he will be making in the future.

Especially on the vital issues of the environment and climate change. 

Thank you Ed. Thank you so much for all you’ve done.

And to Harriet Harman not just for her leadership and service, but for her commitment and passion for equality and the rights of women. 

The way she has changed attitudes and law through her courage and determination. The Equality Act is one of many testaments to her huge achievements. Thank you, Harriet, for everything you’ve done and everything you continue to do.

I also want to say a big thank you to Iain McNicol, our General Secretary, and all our Party staff in London and Newcastle and all over the country for their dedication and hard work during the General Election and leadership election campaigns. 

And also to all the staff and volunteers who are doing such a great job here this week in Brighton at this incredible conference we’re holding. Thank you to all of them. They’re part of our movement and part of our conference.

Also I want to say a special thank you to the fellow candidates who contested the leadership election for this party.

It was an amazing three month experience for all of us.

I want to say thank you to Liz Kendall, for her passion, her independence, determination and her great personal friendship to me throughout the campaign. Liz, thank you so much for that and all you contribute to the party.

I want to say thank you to Yvette Cooper for the remarkable way in which she’s helped to change public attitudes towards the refugee crisis. 

And now for leading a taskforce on how Britain and Europe can do more to respond to this crisis. Yvette, thank you for that.

And to Andy Burnham, our new Shadow Home Secretary, for everything he did as Health Secretary to defend our NHS – health service free at the point if use as a human right for all.

I want to say thank you to all three for the spirit and friendship with which they contested the election.

Thank you Liz.

Thank you Yvette.

Thank you Andy.

I want to thank all those who took part in that election, at hustings and rallies all across the country. Our Party at its best, democratic, inclusive and growing.

I’ve got new people to thank as well. 

The talented colleagues working with me in the Shadow Cabinet and on Labour’s front bench.

An inclusive team from all political wings of our Party.

From every part of our country.

It gives us the right foundation for the open debate our Party must now have about the future.

I am not leader who wants to impose leadership lines all the time. 

I don’t believe anyone of us has a monopoly on wisdom and ideas - we all have ideas and a vision of how things can be better. 

I want open debate in our party and our movement.

I will listen to everyone.

I firmly believe leadership is about listening. 

We will reach out to our new members and supporters. 

Involve people in our debates on policy and then our Party as a whole will decide. 

I’ve been given a huge mandate, by 59 per cent of the electorate who supported my campaign. I believe it is a mandate for change. 

I want to explain how.

First and foremost it’s a vote for change in the way we do politics.

In the Labour Party and in the country.

Politics that’s kinder, more inclusive.

Bottom up, not top down. 

In every community and workplace, not just in Westminster.

Real debate, not necessarily message discipline all the time.

But above all, straight talking. Honest.

That’s the politics we’re going to have in the future in this party and in this movement.

And it was a vote for political change in our party as well. 

Let me be clear under my leadership, and we discussed this yesterday in conference, Labour will be challenging austerity. 

It will be unapologetic about reforming our economy to challenge inequality and protect workers better. 

And internationally Labour will be a voice for engagement in partnership with those who share our values.

Supporting the authority of international law and international institutions, not acting against them.

The global environment is in peril.

We need to be part of an international movement to cut emissions and pollution.

To combat the environmental danger to our planet.

These are crucial issues. But I also want to add this.

I’ve been standing up for human rights, challenging oppressive regimes for 30 years as a backbench MP.

And before that as an individual activist, just like everyone else in this hall.

Just because I’ve become the leader of this party, I’m not going to stop standing up on those issues or being that activist.

So for my first message to David Cameron, I say to him now a little message from our conference, I hope he’s listening – you never know:

Intervene now personally with the Saudi Arabian regime to stop the beheading and crucifixion of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who is threatened with the death penalty, for taking part in a demonstration at the age of 17.

And while you’re about it, terminate that bid made by our Ministry of Justice’s to provide services for Saudi Arabia - which would be required to carry out the sentence that would be put down on Mohammed Ali al-Nimr.

We have to be very clear about what we stand for in human rights.

A refusal to stand up is the kind of thing that really damages Britain’s standing in the world.

I have huge admiration for human rights defenders all over the world. I’ve met hundreds of these very brave people during my lifetime working on international issues. I want to say a special mention to one group who’ve campaigned for the release of British resident Shaker Aamer from Guantanamo Bay.

This was a campaign of ordinary people like you and me, standing on cold draughty streets, for many hours over many years.

Together we secured this particular piece of justice.

That’s how our human rights were won by ordinary people coming together. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things – that is how our rights and our human rights have been won.

The Tories want to repeal the Human Rights Act and some want leave the European convention on Human Rights.

Just to show what they’re made of, their new Trade Union Bill which we’re opposing very strongly in the House and the country, is also a fundamental attack on human rights and is in breach of both the ILO and the European Convention on Human Rights.

Now I’ve been listening to a lot of advice about how to do this job. 

There’s plenty of advice around, believe me.

Actually I quite like that.  I welcome that.

I like to listen to advice, particularly the advice which is unwelcome. That is often the best advice you get. The people that tell you, “yes, you’re doing great, you’re brilliant, you’re wonderful”. Fine. Thank you, but what have I got wrong? “Oh, I haven’t got time for that.”

I want to listen to people.

But I do like to do things differently as well. 

I’ve been told never to repeat your opponents’ lines in a political debate.

But I want to tackle one thing head on.

The Tories talk about economic and family security being at risk from us the Labour party, or perhaps even more particularly, from me.

I say this to them. How dare these people talk about security for families and people in Britain? 

Where’s the security for families shuttled around the private rented sector on six month tenancies - with children endlessly having to change schools? 

Where’s the security for those tenants afraid to ask a landlord to fix a dangerous structure in their own homes because they might be evicted because they’ve gone to the local authority to seek the justice they’re entitled to?

Where’s the security for the carers struggling to support older family members as Tory local government cuts destroy social care and take away the help they need? 

Where’s the security for young people starting out on careers knowing they are locked out of any prospect of ever buying their own home by soaring house prices?

Where’s the security for families driven away from their children’s schools, their community and family ties by these welfare cuts? 

Where’s the security for the hundreds of thousands taking on self-employment with uncertain income, no sick pay, no Maternity Pay, no paid leave, no pension now facing the loss of the tax credits that keep them and their families afloat? 

And there’s no security for the 2.8 million households in Britain forced into debt by stagnating wages and the Tory record of the longest fall in living standards since records began.

And that’s the nub of it.

Tory economic failure. 

An economy that works for the few, not for the many.

Manufacturing still in decline. 

Look at the Tory failure to intervene to support our steel industry as the Italian government has done. 

So, as we did yesterday in conference, we stand with the people on Teesside fighting for their jobs, their industry and their community. The company has said that it will mothball the plant and lay the workers off, therefore it is not too late now, again, to call on the Prime Minister even at this late stage, this 12th hour, to step in and defend those people, like the Italian government has done. Why can’t the British government? What is wrong with them?

There’s an investment crisis.

Britain at the bottom of the international league on investment. 

Just below Madagascar and just above El Salvador.  So we’re doing quite well!

Britain’s balance of payment deficit £100 billion last year.

Loading our economy and every one of us with unsustainable debt for the future.

And the shocks in world markets this summer have shown what a dangerous and fragile state the world economy is in. 

And how ill prepared the Tories have left us to face another crisis.

It hasn’t been growing exports and a stronger manufacturing sector that have underpinned the feeble economic recovery. 

It’s house price inflation, asset inflation, more private debt. 

Unbalanced. 

Unsustainable. 

Dangerous. 

The real risk to economic and family security. 

To people who have had to stretch to take on mortgages. 

To people who have only kept their families afloat through relying on their credit cards, and payday loans. 

Fearful of how they will cope with a rise in interest rates.

It’s not acceptable.

The Tories’ austerity is the out-dated and failed approach of the past.

So it’s for us, for Labour to develop our forward-looking alternative. 

That’s what John McDonnell started to do in his excellent speech to conference.

At the heart of it is investing for the future. 

Every mainstream economist will tell you that with interest rates so low now is the time for public investment in our infrastructure. 

Investment in council housing, and for affordable homes to rent and to buy.

John Healey’s plan for 100,000 new council and housing association homes a year.

To tackle the housing crisis, drive down the spiralling housing benefit bill and so to make the taxpayer a profit. A profit for the taxpayer because the benefit bill falls when the cost of housing falls. It’s quite simple actually and quite a good idea.

Investment in fast broadband to support new high technology jobs. 

A National Investment Bank to support investment in infrastructure.

To provide finance to small and medium sized firms that our banks continue to starve of the money they need to grow. 

A Green New Deal investing in renewable energy and energy conservation to tackle the threat of climate change.

The Tories of course are selling off the Green Investment Bank. They are simply not interested in this.

This is the only way to a strong economic future for Britain. 

That’s sustainable. 

That turns round the terrible trade deficit. 

That supports high growth firms and businesses. 

That provides real economic security for our people.

The economy of the future depends on the investment we make today in infrastructure, skills, and schools.

I’m delighted that Lucy Powell is our new shadow Education Secretary.

She has already set out how the education of every child and the quality of every school counts.

Every school accountable to local government, not bringing back selection.

We have aspirations for all children, not just a few.

Now my first public engagement as Labour leader came within an hour of being elected.

I was proud to speak at the ‘Refugees Welcome’ rally in London. I wanted to send out a message of the kinder politics we are pursuing and a caring society we want to achieve.

I have been inspired by people across our country.

Making collections for the refugees in Calais. Donating to charities.

The work of Citizens UK to involve whole communities in this effort. 

These refugees are the victims of war - many the victims of the brutal conflict in Syria.

It is a huge crisis, the worst humanitarian crisis in Europe since the Second World War. And globally it’s the biggest refugee crisis there has ever been.

But the scale of the response from the government, Europe and the international community isn’t enough.

And whilst the government is providing welcome aid to the region, especially in the Lebanon, we all know much more needs to be done. Because it’s a crisis of human beings just like you and just like me looking for security and looking for safety. Let’s reach out the hand of humanity and friendship to them.

Now let me say something about national security.

The best way to protect the British people against the threats we face to our safety at home and abroad is to work to resolve conflict.

That isn’t easy, but it is unavoidable if we want real security.

Our British values are internationalist and universal. 

They are not limited by borders.

Britain does need strong, modern military and security forces to keep us safe. 

And to take a lead in humanitarian and peace keeping missions - working with and strengthening the United Nations.

On my first day in Parliament as Labour Leader it was a privilege to meet the soldiers and medics who did such remarkable work in tackling the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone.

There is no contradiction between working for peace across the world and doing what is necessary to keep us safe.

Today we face very different threats from the time of the Cold War which ended thirty years ago.

That’s why I have asked our Shadow Defence Secretary, Maria Eagle, to lead a debate and review about how we deliver that strong, modern effective protection for the people of Britain.

I’ve made my own position on one issue clear. And I believe I have a mandate from my election on it.

I don’t believe £100 billion on a new generation of nuclear weapons taking up a quarter of our defence budget is the right way forward.

I believe Britain should honour our obligations under the Non Proliferation Treaty and lead in making progress on international nuclear disarmament.

But in developing our policy through the review we must make sure we all the jobs and skills of everyone in every aspect of the defence industry are fully protected and fully utilised so that we gain from this, we don’t lose from this. To me, that is very important.

And on foreign policy we need to learn the lessons of the recent past.

It didn’t help our national security that, at the same time I was protesting outside the Iraqi Embassy about Saddam Hussein’s brutality, Tory ministers were secretly conniving with illegal arms sales to his regime.

It didn’t help our national security when we went to war with Iraq in defiance of the United Nations and on a false prospectus.

It didn’t help our national security to endure the loss of hundreds of brave British soldiers in that war while making no proper preparation for what to do after the fall of the regime.

Nor does it help our national security to give such fawning and uncritical support to regimes like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain - who abuse their own citizens and repress democratic rights. These are issues we have to stand up on and also recognise in some cases they are using British weapons in their assault on Yemen. We have got to be clear on where our objectives are.

But there is a recent object lesson in how real leadership can resolve conflicts, prevent war and build real security.

It’s the leadership, the clever and difficult diplomacy that has been shown by Barack Obama and others in reaching the historic deal with Iran. A deal that opens the way for new diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict in Syria.

The scale of the destruction and suffering in Syria is truly dreadful.

More than a quarter of a million people killed.

More than ten million driven from their homes.

I yield to no-one in my opposition to the foul and despicable crimes committed by Isil and by the Assad government including barrel bombs being dropped on civilian targets.

We all want the atrocities to stop and the Syrian people free to determine their own destiny.

But the answer to this complex and tragic conflict can’t simply be found in a few more bombs.

I agree with Paddy Ashdown when he says that military strikes against Isil aren’t succeeding, not because we do not have enough high explosives, but because we do not have a diplomatic strategy on Syria.

That’s the challenge for leadership now, for us, for David Cameron. 

The clever, patient, difficult diplomacy Britain needs to play a leading role in. 

That’s why Hilary Benn and I together are calling for a new United Nations Security Council resolution that can underpin a political solution to the crisis.

I believe the UN can yet bring about a process that leads to an end to the violence in Syria. Yesterday’s meetings in New York were very important.

Social democracy itself was exhausted. 

Dead on its feet.

Yet something new and invigorating, popular and authentic has exploded.

To understand this all of us have to share our ideas and our contributions.

Our common project must be to embrace the emergence of a modern left movement and harness it to build a society for the majority.

Now some media commentators who’ve spent years complaining about how few people have engaged with political parties have sneered at our huge increase in membership.

If they were sports reporters writing about a football team they’d be saying:

“They’ve had a terrible summer. They’ve got 160,000 new fans. Season tickets are sold out. The new supporters are young and optimistic. I don’t know how this club can survive a crisis like this.”

We celebrate the enthusiasm of so many people, old and young, from all communities. 

In every part of the country. 

Joining Labour as members and supporters.

And we need to change in response to this movement.

Our new members want to be active and involved. 

Want to have a say in our Labour Party’s policies. 

Want to lead local and national campaigns against injustice and the dreadful impact of Tory austerity. 

Want to work in their local communities to make people’s lives better.

They don’t want to do things the old way.

Young people and older people are fizzing with ideas. Let’s give them the space for that fizz to explode into the joy we want of a better society.

They want a new politics of engagement and involvement.

Many of them are already active in their communities, in voluntary organisations, in local campaigns.

And we’ve convinced them now to take a further step and join our Labour Party. 

What a tremendous opportunity for our Labour Party to be the hub of every community.

The place where people come together to campaign.

To debate, to build friendships, to set up new community projects.

To explain and talk to their neighbours about politics, about changing Britain for the better.

That’s going to mean a lot of change for the way we’ve done our politics in the past.

Our new Deputy Leader Tom Watson is well up for that challenge. He’s leading the charge and leading the change of the much greater use of digital media as a key resource.

That is the way of communication, it is not just through broadsheet newspapers or tabloids, it’s social media that really is the point of communication of the future. We have got to get that.

One firm commitment I make to people who join our Labour Party is that you have a real say, the final say in deciding on the policies of our party. 

No-one - not me as Leader, not the Shadow Cabinet, not the Parliamentary Labour Party - is going to impose policy or have a veto.

The media commentariat don’t get it.

They’ve been keen to report disagreements as splits: agreement and compromise as concessions and capitulation

No.

This is grown up politics.

Where people put forward different views.

We debate issues.

We take a decision and we go forward together.

We look to persuade each other.

On occasions we might agree to disagree.

But whatever the outcome we stand together, united as Labour, to put forward a better way to the misery on offer from the Conservatives.

There’s another important thing about how we are going to do this. 

It’s a vital part of our new politics.

I want to repeat what I said at the start of the leadership election. 

I do not believe in personal abuse of any sort.

Treat people with respect. 

Treat people as you wish to be treated yourself. 

Listen to their views, agree or disagree but have that debate. 

There is going to be no rudeness from me. 

Maya Angelou said: "You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them."

I want a kinder politics, a more caring society.

Don’t let them reduce you to believing in anything less.

So I say to all activists, whether Labour or not, cut out the personal attacks.

The cyberbullying.

And especially the misogynistic abuse online.

And let’s get on with bringing values back into politics.

So what are our first big campaigns? 

I want to start with a fundamental issue about democratic rights for Britain. 

Just before Parliament rose for the summer the Tories sneaked out a plan to strike millions of people off the electoral register this December. 

A year earlier than the advice of the independent Electoral Commission. 

It means two million or more people could lose their right to vote. 

That’s 400,000 people in London. It’s 70,000 people in Glasgow.

Thousands in every town and city, village and hamlet all across the country

That’s overwhelmingly students, people in insecure accommodation, and short stay private lets. 

We know why the Tories are doing it. 

They want to gerrymander next year’s Mayoral election in London by denying hundreds of thousands of Londoners their right to vote. 

They want to do the same for the Assembly elections in Wales. 

And they want to gerrymander electoral boundaries across the country.

By ensuring new constituencies are decided on the basis of the missing registers when the Boundary Commission starts its work in April 2016. 

Conference we are going to do our best to stop them. 

We will highlight this issue in Parliament and outside. 

We will work with Labour councils across the country to get people back on the registers. 

And from today our Labour Party starts a nationwide campaign for all our members to work in every town and city, in every university as students start the new term, to stop the Tory gerrymander. To get people on the electoral register.

It’s hard work - as I know from 10 years as the election agent for a marginal London constituency. 

But now we have new resources. 

The power of social media. 

The power of our huge new membership. 

Conference, let’s get to it. Get those people on the register to give us those victories but also to get fairness within our society.

And, friends, we need to renew our party in Scotland. I want to pay tribute today to our leader in Scotland, Kezia Dugdale and her team of MSPs in the Scottish Parliament.

I know that people in Scotland have been disappointed by the Labour Party.

I know you feel we lost our way.

I agree with you.

Kezia has asked people to take another look at the Labour Party.

And that’s what I want people across Scotland to do.

Under Kezia and my leadership we will change.

We will learn the lessons of the past.

And we will again make Labour the great fighting force you expect us to be.

We need to be investing in skills, investing in our young people – not cutting student numbers. Giving young people real hope and real opportunity.

Conference, it is Labour that is the progressive voice for Scotland.

There’s another big campaign we need to lead. 

David Cameron’s attack on the living standards of low paid workers and their families through the assault on tax credits. 

First, remind people over and over again David Cameron pledged during the election not to cut child tax credits. 

On the Question Time Leader’s debate he said he had rejected child tax credit cuts. 

It’s a shocking broken promise - and the Tories voted it through in Parliament just two weeks ago. 

How can it be right for a single mother working as a part time nurse earning just £18,000 to lose £2,000 to this broken promise? 

Some working families losing nearly £3,500 a year to this same broken promise.

And how can it be right or fair to break this promise while handing out an inheritance tax cut to 60,000 of the wealthiest families in the country?  See the contrast

So we’ll fight this every inch of the way. 

And we’ll campaign at the workplace, in every community against this Tory broken promise. 

And to expose the absurd lie that the Tories are on the side of working people, that they are giving Britain a pay rise.

It was one of the proudest days of my life when cycling home from Parliament at 5 o’clock in the morning having voted for the national minimum wage legislation to go through.

So of course it’s good to see a minimum wage.

But the phoney rebranding of it as a living wage doesn’t do anyone any good. 

And the Institute of Fiscal Studies has shown Cameron’s broken promise mean millions of workers are still left far worse off.

They can and must be changed.

As I travelled the country during the leadership campaign it was wonderful to see the diversity of all the people in our country.

And that is now being reflected in our membership with more black, Asian and ethnic minority members joining our party.

Even more inspiring is the unity and unanimity of their values.

A belief in coming together to achieve more than we can on our own. 

Fair play for all.

Solidarity and not walking by on the other side of the street when people are in trouble. 

Respect for other people’s point of view. 

It is this sense of fair play, these shared majority British values that are the fundamental reason why I love this country and its people. 

These values are what I was elected on: a kinder politics and a more caring society.

They are Labour values and our country’s values. 

We’re going to put these values back into politics.

I want to rid Britain of injustice, to make it fairer, more decent, more equal. 

And I want all our citizens to benefit from prosperity and success.

There is nothing good about cutting support to the children of supermarket workers and cleaners. 

There is nothing good about leaving hundreds of thousands unable to feed themselves, driving them to foodbanks that have almost become an institution. 

And there is nothing good about a Prime Minister wandering around Europe trying to bargain away the rights that protect our workers. 

As our Conference decided yesterday we will oppose that and stand up for the vision of a social Europe, a Europe of unity and solidarity, to defend those rights.

I am proud of our history.

It is a history of courageous people who defied overwhelming odds to fight for the rights and freedoms we enjoy today.

The rights of women to vote.

The rights and dignity of working people;

Our welfare state. 

The NHS - rightly at the centre of Danny Boyle’s great Olympic opening ceremony.

The BBC. 

Both great institutions. 

Both under attack by the Tories. 

Both threatened by the idea that profit comes first, not the needs and interests of our people. That’s the difference between us and the Tories.

So let me make this commitment. 

Our Labour Party will always put people’s interests before profit. 

Now I want to say a bit more about policy – and the review that Angela Eagle has announced this week. 

Let’s start by recognising the huge amount of agreement we start from, thanks to the work that Angela led in the National Policy Forum. 

Then we need to be imaginative and recognise the ways our country is changing. 

In my leadership campaign I set out some ideas for how we should support small businesses and the self-employed. 

That’s because one in seven of the labour force now work for themselves. 

Some of them have been driven into it as their only response to keep an income coming in, insecure though it is. 

But many people like the independence and flexibility self-employment brings to their lives, the sense of being your own boss. 

And that’s a good thing.

But with that independence comes insecurity and risk especially for those on the lowest and most volatile incomes. 

There’s no Statutory Sick Pay if they have an accident at work. 

There’s no Statutory Maternity Pay for women when they become pregnant 

They have to spend time chasing bigger firms to pay their invoices on time, so they don’t slip further into debt. 

They earn less than other workers. 

On average just £11,000 a year. 

And their incomes have been hit hardest by five years of Tory economic failure.

So what are the Tories doing to help the self-employed, the entrepreneurs they claim to represent? 

They’re clobbering them with the tax credit cuts. 

And they are going to clobber them again harder as they bring in Universal Credit. 

So I want our policy review to tackle this in a really serious way. And be reflective of what modern Britain is actually like.

Labour created the welfare state as an expression of a caring society – but all too often that safety net has holes in it, people fall through it, and it is not there for the self-employed.  It must be. That is the function of a universal welfare state.

Consider opening up Statutory Maternity and Paternity Pay to the self-employed so all new born children can get the same level of care from their parents.

I’ve asked Angela Eagle, our Shadow Business Secretary, and Owen Smith, our Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, to look at all the ways we can we support self-employed people and help them to grow their businesses.

And I want to thank Lillian Greenwood, our Shadow Transport Secretary for the speed and skill with which she has moved policy on the future of our railways forward. 

It was wonderful to see Conference this morning agree our new plan to bring private franchises into public ownership as they expire.

Labour’s policy now is to deliver the fully integrated, publicly owned railway the British people want and need. That’s the Labour policy, that’s the one we’ll deliver on.

Housing policy too is a top priority. 

Perhaps nowhere else has Tory failure been so complete and so damaging to our people.

In the last parliament at least half a million fewer homes built than needed.

Private rents out of control.

A third of private rented homes not meeting basic standards of health and safety.

The chance of owning a home a distant dream for the vast majority of young people. 

There’s no answer to this crisis that doesn’t start with a new council house-building programme. 

With new homes that are affordable to rent and to buy. 

As John Healey, our Shadow Housing Minister, has shown it can pay for itself and make the taxpayer a profit by cutting the housing benefit bill by having reasonable rents, not exorbitant rents

And we need new ideas to tackle land hoarding and land speculation. 

These are issues that are so vital to how things go forward in this country.

I want a kinder, more caring politics that does not tolerate more homelessness, more upheaval for families in temporary accommodation.

A secure home is currently out of reach for millions.

And John Healey has already made a great start on a fundamental review of our housing policies to achieve that.

And we are going to make mental health a real priority.

It’s an issue for all of us.

Every one of us can have a mental health problem. 

So let’s end the stigma.

End the discrimination.

And with Luciana Berger, our Shadow Minister for Mental Health, I’m going to challenge the Tories to make parity of esteem for mental health a reality not a slogan.

With increased funding – especially for services for children and young people. 

As three quarters of chronic mental health problems start before the age of 18.

Yet only a quarter of those young people get the help they need.

All our work on policy will be underpinned by Labour’s values. 

End the stigma, end the discrimination, treat people with mental health conditions as you would wish to be treated yourself. That’s our pledge.

Let’s put them back into politics. 

Let’s build that kinder, more caring world.

Since the dawn of history in virtually every human society there are some people who are given a great deal and many more people who are given little or nothing. 

Some people have property and power, class and capital, status and clout which are denied to the many. 

And time and time again, the people who receive a great deal tell the many to be grateful to be given anything at all.

They say that the world cannot be changed and the many must accept the terms on which they are allowed to live in it.

These days this attitude is justified by economic theory. 

The many with little or nothing are told they live in a global economy whose terms cannot be changed. 

They must accept the place assigned to them by competitive markets.

By the way, isn’t it curious that globalisation always means low wages for poor people, but is used to justify massive payments to top chief executives.

Our Labour Party came into being to fight that attitude. 

That is still what our Labour Party is all about. Labour is the voice that says to the many, at home and abroad: “you don’t have to take what you’re given.”

Labour says:

“You may be born poor but you don’t have to stay poor. You don’t have to live without power and without hope.

“You don’t have to set limits on your talent and your ambition - or those of your children.

"You don’t have to accept prejudice and discrimination, or sickness or poverty, or destruction and war.

“You don’t have to be grateful to survive in a world made by others. 

No, you set the terms for the people in power over you, and you dismiss them when they fail you.”

That’s what democracy is about.

That has always been our Labour Party’s message. 

You don’t have to take what you’re given.

It was the great Nigerian writer Ben Okri who perhaps put it best: 

“The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love”.

But they’re at it again. 

The people who want you to take what you’re given. 

This Tory government. 

This government which was made by the few - and paid for by the few.

Since becoming leader David Cameron has received £55 million in donations from hedge funds. From people who have a lot and want to keep it all.

That is why this pre-paid government came into being. 

To protect the few and tell all the rest of us to accept what we’re given. 

To deliver the £145 million tax break they have given the hedge funds in return. 

They want us to believe there is no alternative to cutting jobs.

Slashing public services.

Vandalising the NHS.

Cutting junior doctor’s pay.

Reducing care for the elderly.

Destroying the hopes of young people for a college education or putting university graduates into massive debt.

Putting half a million more children in poverty.

They want the people of Britain to accept all of these things.

They expect millions of people to work harder and longer for a lower quality of life on lower wages. Well, they’re not having it.

Our Labour Party says no. 

The British people never have to take what they are given. 

And certainly not when it comes from Cameron and Osborne.

So Conference, I come almost to the end of my first conference speech, and I think you for listening OK, alright, don’t worry. Listen, I’ve spoken at 37 meetings since Saturday afternoon, is that not enough? Well talk later.

So I end conference with a quote.

The last bearded man to lead the Labour Party was a wonderful great Scotsman, Keir Hardie who died about a century ago this weekend and we commemorated him with a book we launched on Sunday evening. Kier grew up in dreadful poverty and made so much of his life and founded our party.

Stood up to be counted on votes for women, stood up for social justice, stood up to develop our political party.

We own him and so many more so much. And he was asked once summaries what you are about, summarise what you really mean in your life. And he thought for a moment and he said this:

“My work has consisted of trying to stir up a divine discontent with wrong”.

Don’t accept injustice, stand up against prejudice.

Let us build a kinder politics, a more caring society together.

Let us put our values, the people’s values, back into politics.

Thank you.

This is SRSLY, the pop culture podcast from the New Statesman. Here, you can find links to all the things we talk about in the show as well as a bit more detail about who we are and where else you can find us online.

Listen to our new episode now:

...or subscribe in iTunes. We’re also on Audioboom, Stitcher, RSS and  SoundCloud– but if you use a podcast app that we’re not appearing in, let us know.

SRSLY is hosted by Caroline Crampton and Anna Leszkiewicz, the NS’s web editor and editorial assistant. We’re on Twitter as @c_crampton and @annaleszkie, where between us we post a heady mixture of Serious Journalism, excellent gifs and regularly ask questions J K Rowling needs to answer.

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You can also find us on Twitter @srslypod, or send us your thoughts on tumblr here. If you like the podcast, we'd love you to leave a review on iTunes - this helps other people come across it.

The Links

On Ryan Adams / Taylor Swift

Read Anna’s article, “Ryan Adams’ 1989 and the mainsplaining of Taylor Swift”. Links to the sexist mansplainy articles discussed are in there.

Listen to 1989 by Ryan Adams on Spotify.

The problematic video for Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams”.

The Pretty Much Amazing review titled “Taylor Swift Writes Ryan Adams’ Best Album”.

On The Great British Bake Off

Helen Thomas’ article about how the overseas format exports of the Bake Off are different to the British version. Read her episode-by-episode blog for the NS here.

Caroline's most-read article ever: "Diana was framed: why did the Great British Bake Off throw an innocent WI judge to the wolves?".

Paul's lion bread:

This is a tennis cake (who knew?):

The Bake Off’s Tamal is on Twitter @DrRayBakes and Nadiya is @BegumNadiya.

If you have to, hate read this by Quentin Letts: "I adore The Great British Bake Off. But does it have to be so right on?"

Laurie Penny on the darker side of “British twee”.

On The Lives of Christopher Chant

Get a copy of The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones. This is what Caroline's copy looks like (that Anna read):

The Chrestomanci series has a helpful wiki.

Listener Victoria told us on Twitter that she likes the books so much that her cat is named Chrestomanci:

(@srslypod this is Chrestomanci) pic.twitter.com/XaLQJibcw7

— Victoria (@vvmcell) September 26, 2015

Next week:

We're going to do a special themed episode looking at popular culture adaptations of “highbrow” texts, so Caroline is watching the film She's the Man (based on Twelfth Night).

Your questions:

We loved talking about your recommendations and feedback this week. If you have thoughts you want to share on anything we've discussed, or questions you want to ask us, please email us on srslypod[at]gmail.com, or @ us on Twitter @srslypod, or get in touch via tumblr here. We also have Facebook now.

Music

The music featured this week, in order of appearance, is:

Ryan Adams's Blank Space

Ella Fitzgerald's Petootie Pie.

Our theme music is “Guatemala - Panama March” (by Heftone Banjo Orchestra), licensed under Creative Commons. 

See you next week!

PS If you missed #11, check it out here.

Jeremy Corbyn has delivered his first party conference speech as Labour leader. But it already appears to be unravelling. Alex Massie over at the Spectator points out that a number of its sections seem identical to passages written by the author, professional speechwriter, and former political adviser to Denis Healey and Gerald Kaufman, Richard Heller, on his blog in August 2011.

Parts of Corbyn's speech sound very similar to what Heller wrote in his blog, which is a series of passages he suggested were available to Ed Miliband – "speaking passages offered to Ed Miliband, without reply"– to use in his conference speech in 2011 (Miliband declined to do so). Heller later criticised the speech Miliband gave at the 2011 conference.

The Times' Sam Coates tweeted that Corbyn's team initially denied Heller's involvement:

Team Corbyn deny Richard Heller had anything to do with this speech. It was written by ppl who are "a lot cleverer"http://t.co/rZ7wFVZDDE

— Sam Coates Times (@SamCoatesTimes) September 29, 2015

But that story has changed, with Labour saying his remarks were used as a "template":

So just to recap, Team Corbyn confirm they used Ed Miliband reject speech as template

— Sam Coates Times (@SamCoatesTimes) September 29, 2015

Jeremy Corbyn's team confirms some of his speech was written by the writer Richard Heller, who wrote v. similar speech for Miliband in 2011

— Matt Dathan (@matt_dathan) September 29, 2015

Heller himself has said that his passages were available to others, upon request. Corbyn's team claim that he was "happy" for them to use his writing.

Corbyn spokesman: "Heller was approached because JC thought some of his material captured what he wanted to say and he gave permission"

— Sophy Ridge (@SophyRidgeSky) September 29, 2015

I have contacted Heller to ask if he expressly gave them permission to use the passages. It's likely – he appears to be supportive of Corbyn, praising his authenticity in an opinion piece for the Yorkshire Post.

But that's not the only thing. One of Corbyn's jokes about his negative press coverage was one written by the leftwing comedian Mark Steel. Steel mocked the Times' description of Corbyn's bike as a "Chairman Mao-style bicycle – a less thorough reporter might only mention that he rides a bicycle" in an article for the Independent, and made the same joke on a recent episode of BBC Radio 4's News Quiz. Corbyn used the same joke at the beginning of his speech. I have yet to confirm whether he asked Steel's permission to use the joke.

When I heard that Greg Clark had announced that the government's promised extension of the Right to Buy to housing associations would be voluntary and not mandatory I had an initial sense of relief. Whilst the policy was still fundamentally wrong, at least it was better than that which was originally proposed in the Conservative manifesto.

But the devil is always in the detail, and in this case the detail is horrifying.

In reality this is not a voluntary scheme. Housing associations will collectively vote on whether to accept the government's terms. If they do, even those associations that oppose Right to Buy will be expected to sell their homes. The small print of the scheme essentially says, "you have discretion about whether you sell a home, but you must sell a home." That is a gun to the head of social landlords.

But what is more damaging is that the scheme will still be paid for by the most pernicious aspect of the Conservative manifesto pledge: namely the forced sell-off of council housing.

This will dramatically deplete the stock of social housing in inner-London, where the UK’s housing shortage is already most desperate. It will ensure that the thousands of families on housing waiting lists in inner-London never get an opportunity to enjoy the security of a council home. It will also drop a bomb in the middle of new council house-building programmes that are actually delivering new social housing in London for the first time in generations and threaten regeneration schemes.

The Communities Secretary, Greg Clark, claimed the deal would preserve housing associations’ social mission. It does not.

By agreeing to this deal, housing associations would preserve their own independence, but they would be directly agreeing to attack social housing in the council sector, thereby condemning thousands more families to a lifetime of unnecessary insecurity. The reality is that the depth of the housing crisis in London means that many more lower-income households would be forced out of London altogether as a direct effect of this 'deal'.

For months there has been an all-out attack by the government on housing associations. During this time housing associations’ outstanding house building record has been slandered (even though 40 per cent of all new homes in the UK are currently built by housing associations) and their very existence as organisations independent of government has been brought into question.

I can therefore understand why associations may feel the need to agree to this deal in order to maintain their independence and give them marginally more discretion over where they sell affordable homes.

But the reality is that the deal would gift the government their damaging election pledge on a silver platter and ensure the government policy avoids an almost inevitable defeat of the Housing Bill in the House of Lords. During a time of austerity, and with the prospect of £60 billion worth of additional debt ending up on the Government books, it is also highly debatable whether the Government would want to threaten the independence of housing associations by having them reclassified as government liabilities.

In London it doesn't really matter whether a social home is lost voluntarily or via a mandatory scheme, each lost home deprives a family in need of a much needed place to live.

Agreeing to the deal would suggest self-interest, not social conscience. The extension of Right to Buy deserves proper and full parliamentary scrutiny, not a shady deal between the NHF and government. Housing associations should not become collaborators, and I urge them to do the right thing and reject this "deal".

To help you understand the size of the Labour party, here’s are some figures: Liz Kendall got just 280 fewer votes in fourth place than Tim Farron got in first in the Liberal Democrat leadership race. Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper both got more votes in the first round of voting than David Miliband – the winner of the contest among members last time – got in the fourth round in 2010. Kendall got more votes in 2015 than Ed Balls, Andy Burnham, and Diane Abbott did in 2010.

All this is a convoluted way of saying: it’s a very different Labour party to the one  that was defeated in May.

What does that mean for Labour’s future?

Firstly, the circle of people becoming Labour MPs will likely shrink further, despite having the largest pool of sympathisers to draw from out of any of the parties. But getting selected as a Labour parliamentary candidate will now require talking to close to 1,000 people in most seats. In London, party memberships of over 2,000 are now the new normal. The cost – both in terms of money and time – will write off more and more people from seeking selection.

If boundary changes go through in their current form, selections will become even more expensive, as constituencies will be bigger, both geographically, and in terms of their membership size.

That cost has another important political factor: it’s not only really, really expensive to get selected as a parliamentary candidate. It’s really, really expensive to deselect a Labour MP.

When Labour last had mandatory reselection of MPs – mothballed at this year’s Labour party conference, but its possible restoration is likely to be a recurring feature of the years to come – then, as now, there was an ideological divide between the party’s parliamentary party and its membership. But Labour’s infiltration by parties to its left happened partly because it’s own membership was so small that a handful of activists could swing elections. Selection battles were bruising for Labour MPs, but they weren’t expensive.

So if mandatory reselection is approved in the future, one big question will be if anyone has the deep pockets or the inclination to adequately fund a costly campaign against a sitting Labour MP - and if so, what do they ask for in return?

Jeremy Corbyn has said he would "never" use Britain's nuclear deterrent, even in the event of a nuclear atttack in an interview with the Today programme.

All British Prime Ministers give sealed instructions to  the captains of the Trident submarines, as whether they shoiuld strike back against a nuclear strike or not. But Corbyn's public showing of his hand means that, effectively, Britain would cease to have a deterrent the moment Corbyn walked into Downing Street.

The announcement comes just days after constituency and trade union delegates voted through measures to retain Trident - but Corbyn's statement effectively leaves Labour committed to paying for a deterrent that will never be used.

Twitter is floundering. The site's user numbers may be growing, but this belies the fact that over two thirds of its accounts are inactive. Over 40 per cent of accounts have never tweeted. And, most importantly, it's losing money.

In response, the site under interim CEO Jack Dorsey is changing its original, simple set-up - 140-character tweets displayed chronologically in a user's feed - in order to tempt in those vast swathes of unengaged users. First, they dressed up the site's direct messaging service, allowing group chats and no character limit on messages. Now, though, it looks like they may take the red pen to what is arguably the site's most central feature: the 140-character limit on tweets. 

According to technology news site re/code, sources close to the company say that Twitter is working a "new project" which will "enable Twitter users to publish long-form content to the service". According to the site, Dorsey sees this new feature as one way to grow the site's user base. 

However, as I wrote back in June, the main problems with the site for the average user are that it is scary, lonely, and hard to use. A select few, most working in the media, use it to broadcast their thoughts, brands and opinions, while the rest cower in silence. In this context, is it really a good idea to give Twitter's elite an even bigger megaphone?

Even within the bounds of Twitter's current rules, seasoned users find ways to pack even more of their opinions into the standard length tweet. There are the tweet chains:

There are even special sites, like Twitlonger, which split your long, fascinating thoughts into Twitter-sized chunks and post them for you.

(Those not used to Twitter, incidentally, find these chains of tweets very confusing - especially if users don't tag them with numbers, but just reply to their own tweets. This is because the tweets don't appear together in other users' newsfeed, and must be clicked on before they appear in a readble(ish) chain with the other tweets.) 

Then there are those who screenshot giant chunks of text and add them to their tweets as pictures:

In short: Twitter's regular users already know how to get round the character limit, and allowing longer tweets just puts us at risk of hearing even more from  the loudmouth users who dominate the site. For those already confused and intimidated by the public nature of Twitter, the current limit on tweet lengths may actually be somewhat comforting - the pressure to say something worthwhile can only be greater once you have unlimited space to do it in. 

You always know a business in a trouble when it considers ditching its USP in order to attract more customers. Without its character limit, Twitter is just Facebook with a chronological newsfeed (oh wait - they might get rid of that too) or an uglier Tumblr. 

A new SNP MP, Michelle Thomson, has voluntarily resigned the party whip. The police are investigating property deals she was involved in five years ago.

Michelle Thomson, MP for Edinburgh West, withdrew herself from the party whip and stepped down from her frontbench position when “alleged irregularities” emerged in a series of transactions enacted for her by her former solicitor, Christopher Hales, who was struck off.

The Telegraph reports that a spokesperson for the SNP said that the decision means that, in line with party rules, her party membership has also been suspended.

As your mole writes, Labour's shadow home secretary and turncoat-in-chief Andy Burnham - a man who, it may surprise you to learn, is from the north - is giving his speech to the Labour conference. 

"Wow, what a welcome," he began. "Not bad for a runner up."

This struck some observers as a bit odd, because the welcome, frankly, was pretty bad for a runner up. Only a tiny minority of those in the hall had bothered to stand up to greet Burnham – few enough, in fact, that it wasn't immediately obvious whether they were giving a standing ovation or trying to leave. 

This mystery was quickly cleared up by a quick look at the text of the speech issued by the party's press office. Here's how it begins:

The "check against delivery" note has always been useful to Britain's hard-working hacks. In this case, perhaps, a suggestion that Burnham checked the speech against the welcome he actually received may have been useful, too.

Still. You can't expect too much polish from someone from outside the Westminster Bubble, I suppose.

What would you do in the event of nuclear war? It’s one of the first questions that new prime ministers face – and one of the most chilling. Tony Blair is said to have been “very quiet” when asked, and few of the country’s top brass are willing to reveal their answer.

Jeremy Corbyn has been in the headlines again this morning for his vocal opposition to Trident, the UK’s nuclear deterrent system at sea. The fact he would not use nuclear weapons is unlikely to come as a shock – he is Vice Chair on the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s 2014-15 council – but it is still remarkable to hear such a forthright response on a matter most leaders have declined to comment on.

Yet it's a decision all prime ministers must make. The incoming premier is usually tasked with writing the four “letters of last resort” within a few days of taking office. These handwritten notes are taken to the UK’s four Vanguard-class submarines, the ships which carry the ballistic missiles the Royal Navy calls “the nation’s ultimate weapon”. At any time, one of these submarines, letter on board, is patrolling somewhere in the world’s oceans. Since 1969, the Navy has not missed a single day of patrol.

The letters contain the PM’s instructions of what to do in the worst-case nuclear scenario: the obliteration of the UK state. If they, and their selected second in command, are both killed in a nuclear strike, the commander of the Vanguard submarine undertakes a series of checks (one of which, pleasingly, is whether Radio 4 is still broadcasting – a mechanism which reportedly once put the Navy on alert when the station went off air for fifteen minutes). If all the checks come up negative, the note dictates what the Captain should do. As a 2009 Slate article on the subject remarked, it's a strangely intimate way of handling the country’s nuclear capability – akin to life imitating John le Carré – and Britain is the only nuclear power to use such a system.

But what have former prime ministers written? Slate reports that unused letters are destroyed without being read: the weightiness of the decision, perhaps, being offset by the fact that no-one will ever know what one chose except in the most desperate circumstances. The inevitable time delay between the letter being written and its being opened means that the PM must excise broad moral judgements rather than situationally-dependent ones; this is about ethics, not tactics. Given both the secrecy of the letters and the bathos of any reveal – what is of the utmost gravitas in the event of nuclear war can read as bizarrely quaint in peace-time – few have elected to comment on their selection.

Most of what we know about former PMs’ judgements comes from a Radio 4 program, The Human Button. This documentary suggests that the four options available include not only retaliation and non-retaliation, but putting Trident in the service of an allied government – Australia or America – and asking the captain to excise his own judgement. Denis Healey, who was one of Harold Wilson’s alternate decision-makers, said he “had to make you think you would use them, even if you wouldn’t in practice. . . . In practice I would have not”. Only one prime minister has said his decision on the record: Jim Callaghan.

If it were to become necessary or vital, it would have meant the deterrent had failed, because the value of the nuclear weapon is frankly only as a deterrent. But if we had got to that point, where it was, I felt, necessary to do it, then I would have done it. I’ve had terrible doubts, of course, about this. I say to you, if I had lived after having pressed that button, I could never, ever have forgiven myself.

Various articles online claim that several former prime ministers – including Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major – have said otherwise, arguing that if a nuclear deterrent had already failed then retaliation against civilians would be pointless. But the original source of these reports is hard to ascertain. As it stands, Jeremy Corbyn might be one of the handful of candidates for prime minister whose ultimate decision would be known to the public.

What do you think?

2-8 October 2015 issue
The Tory Tide

Featuring

Ian Leslie on the "dangerous character" and risky behaviour of the Conservative radical Michael Gove.

Michael Ashcroft on Jeremy Corbyn's chances and that infamous moment from his Cameron biography.

Tim Wigmore on the resilience of the right across Europe.

Stephen Bush: The Tories are the zombie party - with an ageing, falling membership, still they stagger on to victory.

George Eaton: Below the surface at the Labour conference, all sides armed themselves for future battles.

Plus aBooks Special, featuring:

Ali Smith onJohn Berger,Margaret Atwood on Robert Bringhurst, Rowan Williams on Jeanette Winterson, Erica WagneronTed Hughes, Germaine GreeronShakespeare, John Niven on Morrissey, and Eimear McBride, Blake Morrison, Deborah Levy and more on their favourite experimental fiction.

Ian Leslie: The Messianic restlessness of Michael Gove

In a profile for the New Statesman, Ian Leslie argues that, much as he lobbed a grenade into the education establishment with free schools and his reform agenda, Michael Gove is poised to go into combat with the legal profession.

Michael Gove is the politest man in politics and one of the most abrasive, a charmer who cultivates enemies. He is pious, loyal and incurably irreverent. He is a gifted communicator who is widely misunderstood, an accomplished operator who repeatedly makes basic errors, and a right-wing ideologue with a fierce aversion to unearned privilege. He is a Conservative. He is a radical.

His party isn't sure if he is an asset or a liability.

[. . .]

In July, Gove gave an interview to Allegra Stratton on BBC TV's Newsnight. She asked him about a poll which had found that less than a fifth of teachers supported him. Gove started to stumble over his words. Determined to regain his customary verbal command, he accidentally made explicit what he had previously only implied. "What I can tell you is that outstanding teachers, and outstanding head teachers, are, I find, overwhelmingly in favour of what we're doing." Stratton: "So it's the bad ones that don't get it?" Gove: "Yes."

Five days later he was fired.

Leslie speaks to teachers and other professionals to understand why Gove was so despised during his time as secretary of state for education.

When I asked [Laura McInerney, the editor of Schools Week and a former teacher] if the response of teachers to Gove was disproportionate, she drew a deep breath. "My school was in buildings that had been rendered inadequate for ten years. Two generations of children had been through the doors of a condemned building. We were six weeks from having a new one. Then he cancelled it. Imagine being the head teacher. You've spent three years on a plan for the new building, consulting with parents, hoping that in 18 months or so it might be a place where you don't feel ill every time you walk in. And someone comes along and says, 'Sorry, no.' Ten years!"

She paused, but continued, in a voice tightening with remembered fury. "Then they whack you over the head for teaching media studies instead of computing, and tell you that if you fail on this, all your senior leaders will be sacked and replaced by an academy trust. You don't need to know who this trust is, or why it's going to be running your school - that will be decided by a hedge-fund manager. Oh, and we're changing the curriculum, so every lesson you've ever planned in the last five years is obsolete, and you can't use any of it again. Imagine the panic, in any workplace, if all of those things hit you! And every week he's announcing this stuff in the Sunday fucking Times, which is owned by his previous boss."

Friends and colleagues describe the extent of Gove's ambition in his new post as Secretary of State for Justice:

Gove is an inveterate reformer, driven by a desire to change the world, rather than simply manage it: as a friend and former colleague at the Department for Education told me, with feeling, "The thing about Michael is that he wants to do things - to change things because he believes in them." As a personality, he stands out in the rather bland world of Westminster, a parakeet among pigeons. Someone who has worked closely with all the key players in this government calls him "the most interesting man in politics".

[. . .]

Another of Gove's friends told me, "Michael is an idealist - a dangerous character."

[. . .]

Mary Bousted, the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), the teachers' union, who is an otherwise unsparing critic, told me: "He wants a more equal society. He truly believes in education as a vehicle for social justice."

Leslie also explores the mystery of the minister's immaculate manners and his personal life:

His politeness is rigorously enforced, as if developed to constrain some anarchic inner force. It can also be used as a weapon. "Michael is aggressively polite," a former colleague of his told me. "He uses his politeness to make people feel uncomfortable; to put them out of their comfort zone." The politeness has a distancing effect even on those who know and like him. "I worked with him closely for years," said the former colleague, "and I barely knew him." A friend told me, "There is a mystery at the heart of Michael." Another said that he imagines Gove's formality extends even to his wife, although her columns sometimes read like deliberate attempts to deformalise her husband: she has discussed his inept driving, his aromatic orange corduroys, and even the couple's conjugal relations ("just another chore . . . to tick off your endless to-do list").

He concludes:

In the first months in his new job, he has been conciliatory, charming and curious. He has praised barristers warmly and invited the likes of the Howard League for Penal Reform, usually kept at a distance from Tory governments, into his big tent. But then, this is how he started at Education. Friends of his told me he now understands, better than he did, the need to build alliances. But the gap between knowing something intellectually and conforming to it can be wide.

Lawyers, when he reflects, might make a juicy target (somebody who was present in the room for a cabinet meeting in the last parliament recalled Gove making a quip to the effect that he wanted a country in which there were more railway lines and fewer lawyers). Many voters will happily believe that barristers are guilty of Spanish practices. The prison service is a monopoly. If it is standing in the way of prisoners becoming the authors of their own life stories, won't it have to be taken on?

In a column published the day before the general election, Sarah Vine raged against the government machine. Her targets included the civil service ("neither civil nor a service"), the Cabinet Secretary, Jeremy Heywood, and Speaker John Bercow. "Politics is the opposite of meritocratic," she wrote: "keep your head down and get on with your job, and you'll get no glory." Her husband is hardly in need of this lesson. Reform through consensus may be a fine thing, but no glory accompanies it. There is likely to come a time soon when Michael Gove feels the need, perhaps after due provocation, to take the pin out of a grenade and hurl it into enemy territory.

Michael Ashcroft: Why my Cameron biography wasn't a hatchet job

The NS Diary comes from Lord Ashcroft, who responds to the furore that followed the Daily Mail's publication of extracts from his and Isabel Oakeshott's "unauthorised" biography of David Cameron:

The things one worries about are seldom the things that come to pass. It seems strange now to reflect that, as we prepared to launch Call Me Dave, Isabel Oakeshott and I would sometimes wonder whether our biography of David Cameron was going to get the attention we thought our two years' graft merited.

So, we're not complaining about the deluge of coverage. Like Kim Kardashian's posterior, it almost broke the internet - although the anecdote that caused such a sensation was only a few paragraphs out of 200,000 words and was never presented as fact (rather as a curious tale that could be believed or otherwise). In relating this story there was never any intention to be nasty, or to judge the PM for taking part in such antics - if indeed he did. We all did a few daft things when we were young.

One notion I would contest is that Call Me Dave was planned as a hatchet job. It is nearly 600 pages long, and we went to great lengths to speak to dozens of sources who were both sympathetic and close to the PM; some, inevitably, on condition of anonymity. They gave us a great deal of material that reflects well on him. We wanted to produce a thorough, balanced and impartial biography, and - colourful anecdotes notwithstanding - I think anyone who reads the whole book will agree that this is what we have done. As we make clear, Cameron has much of which to be proud.

The downside of having your book serialised in a newspaper is that you do not get to write the headlines. The Daily Mail gave us a great showing, but "Revenge" is not quite the word I would have chosen to sit above the first day's coverage. Many in Westminster knew that my relationship with Cameron was not as close as it once was, and I wanted to clarify why this was the case: essentially, I believe I was offered a position that never materialised. I was upfront about that in the preface, but what follows that introduction is objective. After all, my co-author, who is a former political editor of the Sunday Times, has no beef with Dave.

Tim Wigmore: The resilience of the right 

Tim Wigmore recalls that after the financial crisis reached its peak in 2008, many expected politics to swing to the left in Europe and the Anglosphere - but the change never arrived. He considers why:

One big factor is that the centre left has not been able to answer the question of what it exists for when there is no money left. As management of the economy has become a much more important issue, right-wing parties have benefited because they "are often labelled better economic managers", says Andrew Little, leader of the New Zealand Labour Party. Thomas Hofer, an Austrian political consultant, says: "In times of crises, conservatives might be trusted more, as they are seen to keep an eye on a balanced budget. When there's growth, social democrats are - or were - trusted to spread the wealth."

 [. . .]

The crash has also damaged the left by making voters more insular and defensive, especially towards immigration. Parties of the centre right, meanwhile, "have always been more associated with a rather tougher line on immigration" and so "are likely to do better at elections where it's up in the mix", says the Conservative Party historian Tim Bale. The populist right has been the biggest beneficiary of this shift, attracting working-class people who once voted for left-wing parties but now fear immigration is threatening their livelihoods.

Wigmore concludes:

The best could be yet to come for the right. Across Europe and the Anglosphere populations are ageing. "[This] benefits the right, because voters shift right as they get older," says Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at Birkbeck College in London. The "old vote" counts even more because so few young people vote: across Europe last year, only 28 per cent of those aged 18-24 voted in the European parliamentary elections, compared to 51 per cent of those 55 and over. In addition, there is an apparent rightward shift in young people's attitudes. In the UK research shows that the "millennial generation" has moved to the right of its parents in its attitudes to the economy and the state and its confidence in the welfare state.

So much, then, for the idea of the economic crash heralding another dawn of social democracy. Instead, it ushered in an age of the right.

Stephen Bush: The Tories are the zombie party - with an ageing, falling membership, still they stagger on to victory

Stephen Bush, editor of the NS's Staggers, argues that although the Conservative Party is "Britain's table-topping team", it doesn't have "any fans".

The Tories have become the zombies of British politics: still moving though dead from the neck down. And not only moving, but thriving. One Labour MP in Brighton spotted a baby in a red Babygro and said to me: "There's our next [Labour] prime minister." His Conservative counterparts also believe that their rivals are out of power for at least a decade.

He adds:

[The] Conservatives retain the two trump cards that allowed them to win in May: questions about Labour's economic competence, and the personal allure of David Cameron. The public is still convinced that the cuts are the result of "the mess" left by Labour, however unfair that charge may be. If a second crisis strikes, it could still be the Tories who feel the benefit, if they can convince voters that the poor state of the finances is still the result of New Labour excess rather than Cameroon failure.

Bush concludes:

As for Cameron, in 2015 it was his lead over Ed Miliband as Britons' preferred prime minister that helped the Conservatives over the line. This time, it is his withdrawal from politics which could hand the Tories a victory even if the economy tanks or cuts become widely unpopular. He could absorb the hatred for the failures and the U-turns, and then hand over to a fresher face. Nicky Morgan or a Sajid Javid, say, could yet repeat John Major's trick in 1992, breathing life into a seemingly doomed Conservative project. For Labour, the Tory zombie remains frustratingly lively. Labour's target voters think none of these things. Nor do many current Labour supporters. The table gives the main findings. The first column sets out the views of those who voted for Corbyn to be party leader. The final three columns are taken from a separate survey of more than 10,000 electors. Currently, just over a quarter would vote Labour; a further 20 per cent would consider doing so. To win in 2020, Labour must retain the support of almost all its present supporters and at least half its potential voters.

George Eaton: Below the surface at the Labour conference, all sides armed themselves for future battles

In the Politics Column, George Eaton describes the unsettled atmosphere at this year's Labour conference:

At the 1981 Labour conference in Brighton, Neil Kinnock found himself assailed by a young Tony Benn supporter in the lavatory of the Grand Hotel. The future leader was targeted for his refusal to endorse Benn's failed deputy leadership bid. "I beat the shit out of him," Kinnock later recounted. Those who surveyed the scene described seeing "blood and vomit all over the floor".

Before Labour assembled in the same town for its 2015 conference, MPs spoke darkly of their fear of a return to such barbarousness. Jeremy Corbyn's leadership has pitted the party's "Tories" and "Trots" against each other. Yet the week passed without rhetorical or physical fisticuffs. After the election of a leader opposed by more than 90 per cent of MPs, Labour managed a passable impression of unity.

[. . .]

The conference was a bridge between the old world and the new.

But Eaton notes that there were suspicions of a storm behind the calm:

A popular theory in Labour circles is that Corbyn will voluntarily resign after two years, having achieved some internal reforms, and endorse a successor. Lisa Nandy, the shadow energy and climate change secretary, is the name most often mentioned, though she is from the soft left, rather than the leader's harder wing. Those close to Corbyn, however, say that he is "enjoying" the job and is not planning an early departure. This did not prevent speculation in the bars of Brighton about the identity of the next leader. Dan Jarvis, Tom Watson, Yvette Cooper and Chuka Umunna were the names most commonly cited. Corbyn's opponents acknowledge that their task next time will be to unite around one candidate and to back him or her unreservedly.

He concludes:

Next May, the Labour leader will face his first electoral tests in London, Scotland, Wales and England. Some MPs have earmarked this date as the first possible moment to strike. Others warn that this strategy could founder if Corbyn exceeds the low expectations. MPs' greatest fear is that the issue of reselection will rise as they are blamed by the left for any reversals. McDonnell's appeal to former shadow cabinet members to "come back and help us succeed" was interpreted by many as a threat.

Labour emerged from Brighton surprisingly unscathed. But underlying the calm was the fear that, by next year, there will be blood.

Plus

Henry Marsh on the Michael Marmot, social inequalities and the health gap.

Will Self: I flew to Guernsey for a walk but ended up playing tax-dodger dodgems.

Sophie McBainon authoritarian Asia and the memoirs of two North Korean dissidents who escaped to China.

Suzanne Moore: I wish I could forget why, on a spring day in New York, I sat on the pavement and wept.

Anna Leszkiewicz interviews this year's Forward Prize-winning poet, Claudia Rankine.

Russia has reportedly begun airstrikes against Isis in Syria “at the request of the Syrian president”.

Following diplomatic friction between US president Barack Obama and Russian premiere Vladimir Putin at the UN general assembly, Reuters reports that Russia gave the US an hour to clear Syrian airspace before beginning flights.

State sources revealed this morning that Federation Council, the upper house in Russia’s parliament, voted unanimously for military intervention. Russia is expected to only use its air force and will not send in ground troops.

The last time the Federation Council authorised the use of military force in territory outside the confederation was in March of last year, when it gave permission for Putin to send forces into Ukraine.

Russia’s TASS news agency stresses that the strikes comply with international law, following a request from the government of the state in question. “Baghdad has earlier sent the respective request to the international coalition”.

Journalists in Washington, however, are reporting that the first strikes appear to have hit not Isis controlled areas, but Rebels in Homs:

Photo circulating of #Russia first airstrike in Homs #Syria. Activists saying it hit Rebels (not ISIS) in Talbiseh pic.twitter.com/rHF6EJuZAH

— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) September 30, 2015

On Monday, Obama and Putin exchanged thinly-veiled blows on the subject.

While both David Cameron and Obama have indicated that Bashar al-Assad must not remain in government in Syria in the long-term, Putin called the president “legitimate”. These air strikes will be seen as further support for his regime.

The strikes follow news that the Pentagon’s top Russia official resigned yesterday amidst debates over how the US should respond to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and the Syria.

The art of storytelling has been an integral part of Marrakech’s culture for generations. One of the most recognisable symbols of Djemaa el-Fnaa Square, the city’s main thoroughfare, is of animated men performing folk tales; stories about kings, families, lovers and beasts, each one meticulously crafted to educate, entertain and inspire.

But over the past decade, the number of storytellers present in the city has declined significantly. With the advent of new technologies and more lucrative revenue streams, many storytellers have retired from their profession or moved onto something new. For a while, it has seemed as if Moroccan storytelling may be lost completely. One man, however, has been fighting to keep this distinctive tradition alive in the modern world.

Hajj Ahmed Ezzarghani is a master storyteller who has spent more than 60 years sharing folk tales as his profession. Now in his seventies, he’s training a new generation – a mix of university students and young professionals – in the skills of the ancient artform.

All photos: Joelle Gueguen for Cafe Clock Marrakech

“As I have grown older, I have realised that storytelling is dying, because the new generations don’t give it as much attention as ours did,” he explains. “But these young Moroccans, they came to me and said they wanted to learn. So we have been working together to preserve this tradition.”

In Ezzarghani’s youth, storytellers made a viable income from street performances in cities all over Morocco. Ezzarghani himself spent time wandering from lively port cities in the north to quiet towns and villages in the south, sharing his stories with as many people as possible. He spent the last few years of his storytelling career in Djemaa el-Fnaa Square, but retired in 2009 after battling with young performers who would sabotage his performances with staged fights or loud music. “The square has become a place for business instead of art,” he says. “These young acts don’t know the craft [of storytelling].”

One of Ezzarghani's apprentices performs.

Though Ezzarghani accepts that society has changed significantly since his ancient stories were first told, he is keen to emphasise that they still have a role to play in modern life. He believes that storytelling offers two important things to audiences: pleasure and a sense morality. “Storytelling has always been about both entertainment and education,” he says. “By that I mean it has offered both a show and a moral lesson. Each story is about these two sides of a coin.”

At the centre of his work to ensure the continuation of Marrakech’s heritage is Hikayat Morocco, a collective founded by Ezzarghani and his apprentices: Mehdi EL Ghaly, Malika Ben Allal, Jawad EL Bied and Sarah Mouhie.

“We as Moroccans grew up on this form of art,” says EL Ghaly. “Nowadays there are fewer storytellers. Their spaces are smaller and they’ve simply disappeared from Djemaa el-Fnaa Square.”

It was the observation of this fading heritage that led to the creation of Hikayat. “We aim to preserve the traditional Moroccan storytelling, as well as giving back to society and encouraging people to pay attention to this ancient form of education,” he says.

Another performer.

One of the biggest obstacles that modern storytellers encounter comes from technology. Apprentice Ben Allal explains that when videos are posted online, it becomes difficult to make a performance compelling, because the audience may already be familiar with the story. “Technology can be challenging for us, especially with the younger generations, because their lives revolve around social media,” she says. “We love the live interaction we have when we perform a story. It’s very important for a storyteller.”

Hikayat runs popular storytelling events at Café Clock Marrakech every week, attracting audiences to their interactive performances. Michael Richardson, the British expat who owns the café, has been impressed by the diversity of their audiences and the positive public response to their storytelling. “We want to be as open to the local population just as much as we are to any tourist, and I think we’ve achieved that. The audience is varied, and we want to keep it varied,” he says. “We’ve actually had young Moroccans come and visit us who’d never even visited the medina, despite living in Marrakech their whole lives. That’s pretty amazing.”

Passing the tradition on to Morocco's youth.

Richardson adds that some of the older audience members have spoken to him about their childhood memories of Marrakech’s storytelling traditions. Many used to perch on walls in the square and watch the storytellers, fascinated by the epic tales and energetic delivery. For these guests, visiting Café Clock for a storytelling night brings back a lot of fond memories, and shows that the personal and social connections with this artform run deep for the city’s residents.

Among the apprentices, there’s talk of trying to make a career out of professional storytelling in the future, but this isn’t their first priority for the moment; they feel that the preservation of this culture-defining tradition is more important than their individual aspirations. “Our aim now is to put Hikayat Morocco and the work we do on the map – not any commercial thing,” Ben Allal explains. “We have a lot of goals to reach before becoming professional storytellers. But this will come with time.”

As I arrived at the venue for the first Miss Transgender UK pageant (NOT a beauty pageant, I was told repeatedly), the owner, lead organiser and last-minute host Rachael Bailey handed me a running order, along with a printout of American transgender teenager Leelah Alcorn’s suicide note (which went viral late last year, becoming something of a call to action against the reparative therapy industry in the US). Before I could ask Rachael why she had given me the anguished last tumblr post of a dead girl mixed in with a timetable telling me exactly when to expect the talent section, she was already on the other side of the room, going over stage directions for the ballgown catwalk. This set the tone for the evening.

The audience was packed into the upstairs bar of north London night club EGG, and appeared to represent a varied mix of the LGBT community. Friends and family of the contestants and humans of every conceivable gender crowded round the America's Next Top Model-style runway and stage, making full use of the bar and giving the venue an atmosphere not too dissimilar from a Friday night in your average city centre. But that atmosphere was quickly extinguished along with the lights as the first event of this (not a beauty) pageant got underway.

The first half took the form a simple Q&A about the hardships the contestants have faced during their transition, the results of which made cisgender members of the audience gasp while the trans audience members nodded in recognition. For a few moments I am sure many forgot this was supposed to be a competition. Several of the contestants could barely get through their answers, choking back tears.

As wonderful as it was to see these amazing women telling their stories to a loving, supportive room of friends, family and other allies, the judge’s table served as a constant reminder of the grim reality of this whole event. I never, ever wanted to find out how they managed to divvy up the points between the woman who had to flee her country and the intersex woman who had endured several “corrective” surgeries/mutilations as a child. But one thing was certain; only one woman could get that tiara.

The other rounds were more traditional pageant fare, albeit occasionally peppered with invocations to the ghost of Leelah Alcorn, as well as infrequent reminders that “this is not a beauty pageant”. During the talent round, the contestants showed their skills in singing, dancing, burlesque and speechcraft before finally, after almost five hours, bringing the competition to a close with the donning of the ball gowns. Remember, not a beauty pageant.

After a much-needed break, the winner was announced and she was crowned, flowered and sashed before being handed the prize: a £10,000 voucher for gender reassignment surgery redeemable at a cosmetic surgery clinic in New Delhi. This is what the night came down to – whoever scored the most points on talent, dress and horrifying stories of rejection and loss, went home with the money to win a potentially life-saving medical treatment. I couldn't help but think this is what the NHS would look like if Simon Cowell or Piers Morgan were put in charge.

As the winner was swept away to talk to the press, the after-party began. A drag act took to the stage and began miming to various club songs I had never heard of, as the group in front of her suddenly devolved into several heated arguments between a few of the contestants. The row was documented by the BBC3 camera crew who had been filming the whole evening to broadcast for the nation's entertainment at a later time, probably after some incredible feats in editing are performed to wring out every ounce of drama.

This whole evening left me feeling dazed, like I had just watched a coyote give a lecture on quantum physics. My brain was rendered incapable of processing what I had just witnessed.

Rachael Bailey first registered the trademark for “Miss Transsexual UK” late last year and started to spread the idea on social networking sites. She was immediately inundated with angry messages over using the term “transsexual” and as the idea for the pageant evolved, the ire from the trans community only seemed to get worse. “We all have the same pain,” she told me while we sat down as the after party raged on around us. I asked her why she thought people were so against the pageant and she offered her own theory that could be summed up by one word, jealousy. “I ‘pass’ [as cisgender] walking down the street, but I still cry myself to sleep at night because I still don't feel that I am a woman, and people who don't pass seem to think that we have it easy, when we don't because it is exactly the same pain...”.

The pain Rachael repeatedly referred to throughout our conversation appeared to be one of the main forces behind setting up this pageant, and I suspected she saw the concerns raised by trans people as an attack on her attempts to address this pain. “Trans UK, Transsexuals uk and Trans Rights UK and...all those stupid Facebook...fucking organisations had been nothing but ignorant, rude and offensive,” she explained, visibly getting worked up at the memory, and she continued in this vein until she ended on “...as far as I'm concerned they are just nasty trannys”. As she uttered this last transphobic exclamation, I found myself lost for words.

As a feminist, I was horrified by the format. I am no longer even attempting to pretend that this wasn't a beauty pageant. As a human, I had major ethical problems with gender reassignment surgery (or any life-saving medical treatment) being handed out as a prize for performing for the entertainment of others. But as a transgender woman I understood intimately how this event happened. A small group of trans women put this together in an attempt to raise awareness for the suffering they had endured, even resorting to using the tragic loss of Leelah Alcorn to underline the point. In doing so they attracted a group of contestants looking for an opportunity to do the same, with the added benefit of getting at least one person medical treatment that the NHS was uniformly failing to deliver due to budget cuts and a general apathy to transgender healthcare.

But I also understood the sometimes horrific pushback from a transgender community, which feared this anointment of a “Miss Transgender” could add to the stigma trans people already face. It also gives certain radical feminists another stick to beat us with, whilst putting trans women front and centre yet again at the cost of trans men and non-binary people.

One thing is certain. Most transgender people carry with them “the same kind of pain” caused by years, sometimes decades of gender dysphoria, family rejection and the many barbs of an intolerant society and that can and does make trans people desperate to relieve the burden. This will sometimes result in the production of incredibly morbid and bizarre spectacles like Miss Transgender UK, and sometimes it will make transgender people aggressively defend themselves against the perceived threat of a group of women wearing pretty clothes in a room full of loved ones.

One of the things that most troubled Labour MPs about Jeremy Corbyn's speech was how little he had to say about the importance of winning elections and of returning to government. This is not a charge that one can level at Tom Watson. His first conference speech as deputy leader ended in dramatic fashion as he cried for activists to move on "from our summer of introspection" and declared: "We have to get back into government. I’m not in politics to play the game; I’m here to change the game." The difference in tone from Corbyn, who failed several times to join in with the applause for Watson, was stark. Rather than moving on from the summer, the Labour leader and his supporters often prefer to relive it.

Though Watson pledged loyalty to his new chief ("Let’s be clear: because he’s the people’s choice, he’s the right choice"), he delivered an unambiguous warning to the Corbynites: Labour must remain in the winning business. "We have to be the party of everybody, or we’re the party of nobody," he cried (a line that should have in Corbyn's speech). In his peroration, he delivered a Brown-esque rollcall of New Labour achievements of the sort that one could never imagine the party's new leader giving. "In government we made this country a far, far better place: Record numbers of new schools and hospitals. Far better pay for public sector workers. Led the world on climate change and international development. The minimum wage. Tax credits. The pension credit. Civil partnerships. The Disability Discrimination Act. The Human Rights Act. The Gangmasters Act. Paid holidays. Maternity leave. Paternity leave. Union recognition rights. Temporary and agency workers’ rights. And literally a thousand more progressive things we did to change our country for the better. That’s what a Labour government means". It was a reminder Watson, who hails from the party's old right, stands in a very different tradition to the hard-left Corbyn.

The speech was by some distance the finest delivered at the conference and an apt demonstration of why some speak of Watson as a potential future leader. As well as an impassioned tribute to the power of government, he spoke lucidly and authoritatively on micro-businesses and the digital revolution. The activists lapped his old-style tribalism up. The Lib Dems were derided as "a useless bunch of lying sellouts" (don't go betting on a pact), while "the nasty Tories" were to be "[kicked] down the road where they belong". In a party increasingly denuded of big beasts, Watson showed why he is one of the biggest beasts of all.