This was the only moment that an uninspired Labour conference lit up

The truly terrible news of bombings and killings by the Israeli defence force in Lebanon and the need to evacuate British citizens rightly dominated the headlines. And news bulletins were full of the British Prime Minister in New York shaking hands with world leaders as they collectively grapple with devastating wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

It seems carnaptious and trivial to interrupt these genuinely weighty issues with talk about the conference vote that got away.

And yet.

The Labour leader cannot tidy away a nervy, uninspiring conference that came alive not for his downbeat, homily-studded, hectoring speech, but in its final hours when delegates voted to reverse the Chancellor’s cuts to Winter Fuel Payments, after a rousing speech by Unite leader Sharon Graham, the only leader of a major UK trade union to state publicly that she’s open to the idea of indyref2.

Listen to that five-minute speech, and you can see why the leadership made sure her speech was nowhere near their own because it was an old-style, socialist humdinger.

Like Britain’s first female Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Unite’s leader is the first woman to hold that top job – and you can see why. The London-born Graham, with an Irish mum and Geordie dad, succinctly challenged everything in the Reeves playbook with one memorable line, “self-imposed fiscal rules are hanging like a noose around our necks”.

Cue huge, spontaneous applause. Yep, that popular sentiment would have contrasted too severely with the robotic, technocratic Labour front bench and the message ministers rammed home more often than Starmer mentioned his toolmaker dad – we must tighten belts, live within our means and fill the Tories’ £22 billion black hole.

The counter-message from the straight-talking Unite boss – no we don’t. And if money has to be raised, pensioners should be last in the queue and the super-rich should be first.

She quoted Labour’s 1945 manifesto, written at a time when debt to GDP was three times higher than it is now, yet Britain emerged from death, chaos and a war-time economy to build a welfare state.

READ MORE: Kate Forbes hits back at Andrew Marr over Gaelic road signs claims

“It was a manifesto of hope. No mention of cuts, austerity and everyday people being made to pay. They knew in 1945, that Labour could not be better managers – they had to produce lasting change.”

And she gave stirring support to the Grangemouth workforce: “They don’t want your pity – they need Labour to step up to the plate and not allow a billionaire, who buys a football club as a hobby, to throw workers on the scrap heap. We can’t leave Britain to the whim of footloose corporations. Hoping for those corporations to invest is a prayer, it is not a plan.”

And as for the leadership’s argument that a wealth tax would take too long to implement – “absolute rubbish”.

But the vote to overturn means testing was only advisory, most of the cameras had already left and Starmer himself was already in New York for the UN summit. So it was, talk to the hand.

Now that may seem a tad churlish.

Starmer’s own speech did get 10 standing ovations and at least two appeared fairly spontaneous.

But his leader’s speech was laced with more unforced errors than the grimly hilarious confusion between sausages and hostages. His (endless) mantra – country first, party second – is now surely holed below the waterline by the Winter Fuel Payment vote by his own party.

Who wants pensioners to lose their money?

Not the country – it’s the leadership of the Labour Party.

Or to be blunt, Starmer first, country second.

Of course, there’s backchat about millionaire pensioners using their winter payment to buy drinks on winter cruises. That happens – doubtless.

But Cambridge University researchers say they’re particularly concerned “about the impact on single pensioners with annual incomes of between £11,300–£15,000 and couples on £17,300–£22,000”.

These folk who will now miss out are not the super-rich. Falling just above the pension credit threshold doesn’t propel a pensioner into Champagne and cravats. Besides, 37% of those eligible don’t claim – due to lack of awareness, fiercely complex application forms, difficulty accessing the online world and basic pride.

Yet, they are facing the highest electricity bills in Europe (according to Eurostat) and from next week, a new price cap that’s a third more expensive than the previous record high recorded in 2021, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

There were other, better ways to target means testing if it really had to be done.

(Image: ITV) According to Moneysaving expert Martin Lewis (above), Labour had a “usable precedent from the emergency energy crisis measures announced in 2022, when a payment was made to homes in council tax bands A to D – an imperfect but workable proxy for lower household incomes”.

That would have allowed an additional group of lower to middle-income pensioners to keep the winter fuel payments and mitigate bill shocks.

But no. Free Gear Keir was not for turning.

Indeed, as he made crystal clear during his speech, criticism is just “water off a duck’s back”.

And protesters – like the young folk who interrupted his speech over child deaths in Gaza – are there to be roughly huckled out and roundly mocked.

“He must still have a 2019 conference pass,” said Starmer straight after the interruption, revealing both his ability to bounce back after interruption AND his preoccupation with not being Jeremy Corbyn.

Perhaps the phrase that cropped up more often than his Uriah Heep-like fondness for service, was Starmer’s proud boast to have “changed the party”. Yip – Labour certainly has changed. The ubiquitous acceptance of gifts, offshore tax haven donation and freebies is Tory. The new logo looks Tory. The technocratic talk is Tory. The means testing is Tory.

Even the patter is Tory – Starmer made constant references to the Tory slogans and policies he should be consigning to the dustbin of history – levelling up, taking back control and even – echoing George Osborne and David Cameron in 2012 – the utterly empty and widely mocked idea that “we’re all in it together”.

To paraphrase Neil Kinnock, back in the days Labour leaders gave barnstorming speeches: “Be afraid, be very afraid.”

What’s coming next?

Probably a clampdown on the long-term sick, who will doubtless be characterised as whingers and malcontents, not folk stuck waiting for basic hospital procedures or struggling with multiple long-term conditions.

Indeed, English Health Secretary Wes Streeting is spooking staff and patients by repeating his assertion that the health service is broken with the implied solution of (more) private finance.

So, Graham is speaking for tens of thousands, maybe millions of voters seriously worried by Labour’s new direction.

Liz Truss may have spooked the markets with her un-costed budget. But Reeves is spooking Labour voters – old and new – by deciding pensioners, not the super-wealthy, should be first for the chop.

READ MORE: Labour's new 'climate envoy' Rachel Kyte linked with £4m party mega-donor

Even though 50 of the richest families in Britain have assets of £500bn – a total that exceeds the combined wealth of half the “everyday” population.

But the cogent argument for transformational change by Graham doesn’t let the SNP off the hook either, even if opinion polls suggest voters are sufficiently alarmed by Labour to consider a switch back to the SNP at the next Scottish elections.

Managerialism is not what anyone is voting for – north or south of the Border.

A plan for public ownership, wealth and land taxes, massive investment and a new grassroots participative democracy – that will swing it for the Scottish party bold enough to talk serious politics again.

But if that isn’t the SNP, Labour or the Greens, what then for progressive Scots?