Four reasons why this year’s Labour party conference felt so weak

There are many reasons why Labour conference felt flat this year, and many of them are out of the party’s control.

It cannot help that its MPs and a number of its delegates are tired after an energetic Scottish campaign. It cannot help that the Scottish campaign saw a level of engagement in politics that cannot be replicated, save by another vote with a clear question and clear implications, and that would always have contrasted badly with the Labour conference. It cannot help that the referendum took place just days before the conference began, and that therefore it was impossible to get the same sort of coverage you’d expect in the run-up to your conference in the press. Even the Guardian, whose readers are more interested than most in the Labour party, put a news story on comments Ed Balls had made to the paper almost as far back in the news section as they’d go.